


The Butterfly Effect

by AnotherSpoonyBard



Series: Chaos Theory [1]
Category: Bleach
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Chaos Theory AU, Gen, Male-Female Friendship, No Ichigo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-16
Updated: 2016-06-25
Packaged: 2018-07-14 08:55:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 10
Words: 49,574
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7164323
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AnotherSpoonyBard/pseuds/AnotherSpoonyBard
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There is a principle in chaos theory that states that even a minute change in initial conditions can have a profound effect on the events that follow. Metaphorically, one might say instead that even a tiny drop in a pond may create wide ripples. </p><p>Ichigo Kurosaki’s untimely death at the tender age of nine means he can’t receive Rukia Kuchiki’s shinigami powers, or stop her execution, or defeat Sōsuke Aizen in battle. But it doesn’t mean that she’ll never find herself in need of help, or that the Central 46 won’t condemn her to death, or that Aizen will never try to kill the Soul King. Fate, after all, finds a way.</p><p>It all begins in Karakura, with a disgruntled Quincy, an eccentric shop owner, and a talking cat.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Initialize

**Author's Note:**

> This is about as AU as you can get while still being in the Bleach universe. The big idea here is that I’m writing a version of the series where Ichigo died with his mom, and is therefore not present to be the protagonist. To be clear: I love Ichigo, in all his hilarious, orange-haired Canon Sue omni-powered glory. But I think the stories Kubo has told might be equally interesting if there wasn’t anyone like that to clinch all the victories. So this fic is the beginning of a series that answers the question “what if Ichigo Kurosaki was dead?”
> 
> This is, of course, only one possible answer, but I hope it’ll be an entertaining one. The spotlight in this series will shift around; I want it to be realistically ensemble-oriented. But for the first arc of the show, I needed the focus to be on Rukia and Karakura town, so… the main roles are played by Rukia herself, Ishida, Urahara, and Yoruichi.
> 
> Gen for this fic, ships later. (I’m taking suggestions on what they should be, by the way).

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Initialize: _transitive verb_ , /ɪˈnɪʃ(ə)lˌaɪz/
> 
> 1\. to set to a starting position, value, or configuration  
> 2\. to make a system ready for use

Rain pattered off the uniform dark surface of Uryū’s umbrella, and a quick glance at the clouds ahead confirmed that a storm threatened for later that night. A normal occurrence, for Karakura in the spring. The leaves had only begun to bud, so the clouds had made everything grey, from the sidewalks to the houses to the bare trunks of the occasional tree, branches forking dark against the pale sky like inverse lightning. 

Uryū stepped left to avoid a puddle, mindful of the glass bottle with its sad, drooping flowers that leaned up against a nearby telephone pole. The color in the petals was stubborn, refusing to yield its stark whiteness to the overcast haze, and he moved his eyes from the blooms to the boy sitting beside them. _He_ was grey, becoming indistinct at the edges, what had once been a bright crimson shirt faded to almost brown. His knees were pulled to his chest, his arms draped over them, face hidden from sight. 

Spirits could not, of course, feel the rain in the same way the living did. Not in this world. The boy was dry, but still he shivered. Uryū’s feet stopped moving, and he sighed under his breath, turning himself ninety degrees so he was looking down at the child from the front. 

“No one is coming for you,” he said, his tone flat. 

The child startled, his head lifting sharply to peer up at Uryū, who stared impassively back for a moment, adjusting his glasses with the first two fingers of his free hand. A car drove past on the road, its wheels sending up a sheet of water from near the gutter. It fell just short of the telephone pole, receding like a wave on the ocean, leaving a thin layer of silt behind. 

“You—” the boy started, and Uryū pursed his lips. 

“Can see you, yes.” He adjusted the angle of his umbrella slightly, so that the water dripped off behind him instead of in front. 

“Then you… can you tell my mom that I’m here? I got lost, and I don’t know where—”

Uryū shook his head. “She is not coming.” The newspapers this morning had made that clear enough. “No one is—and you shouldn’t wait.”

The child continued to stare at him with wide, dark eyes, and Uryū resisted the urge to shift his weight, or look away, even when the boy’s eyes gained a glimmer that could only be tears. “B-but… mom… I want my mom!” He started to sob, and Uryū fought to keep his face from changing, swallowing thickly. 

Shifting the bag over his shoulder, he crouched in front of the child. “You should—” but he was cut off by a wail, and for a moment doubted his decision to stop. The spirits of children were… difficult, in this way. He turned his face skywards for a moment, grimacing to himself. A few drops of rain spotted his glasses, evading the plastic barrier over the rest of him.

Laying a hand on the child’s head, he waited a few moments for the sniffles to quiet before he tried again, making his tone softer than it was firm. “What is your name?”

The boy looked up at him, Uryū’s fingers dragging through his hair and ruffling it slightly. “Kenta. Kenta Sawada.” He leaned slightly into the hand on his crown, and Uryū left it there. The strands had a fluffy texture to them, like goose down. 

“And your mother, she is Mayu Sawada-san, isn’t she?”

Kenta’s eyes rounded, and he regarded Uryū with something like awe, his mouth falling open slightly. “Y-yes. You know her? Where is she? Where's my mom?”

Uryū resisted the urge to sigh. “Kenta-kun. You’ve been feeling a strange thing for the past few days, haven’t you? Something that feels like it’s pulling you, from here?” He pointed at the short chain protruding from the child’s chest. As usual, Kenta did not appear to have noticed its presence on his own, and he fell out of his seated position into an ungainly sprawl when Uryū drew his attention to it. He nodded slowly, his eyes moving back up from the chain to Uryū’s face. 

“That feeling is your mother. She’s calling you, Kenta-kun, and you’ve been fighting her and staying here.” The lie tasted bitter on his tongue, but this was the only way he could achieve what he needed to do, and so he told it as convincingly as he knew how, as bluntly as he said everything else. Another thing about child spirits was that they tended to believe whatever he said, the prejudices and skepticism of adults not yet wired into them. 

“Really? You promise?” Kenta gripped his chain in a small fist. It clinked faintly, the bottom links shuddering together at the movement.

Uryū swallowed his distaste and inclined his head solemnly. “You belong where that feeling is pulling you.”

That was all it took. Kenta’s face split wide into a beatific smile, and he closed his eyes, pale yellow limning his body for a moment, until, with one final bright flash, he disappeared entirely, crossed safely into Soul Society. Uryū frowned slightly, then exhaled deeply and rose from his crouch, staring for a moment at the pristine white of the flower petals before he turned and fixed his eyes back on the grey sidewalk in front of him.

* * *

Reaching his destination at last, Uryū pulled open the sliding door at the front of the familiar green-trimmed building, freestanding between larger ones on either side. “I’m back,” he called into the house, removing his shoes and setting them at the end of the neat row with the other pairs. The largest was conspicuously missing, a blank spot alerting him to the fact that Tsukabishi was out somewhere. 

“You’re late.” The throaty, masculine voice came from his immediate left, and he flicked a glance momentarily to the cat sitting near the umbrella stand. Uryū shrugged, tapping his closed umbrella against the doorframe to knock off most of the excess water before placing it in the stand. The cat jumped away before any of the water could land on her, swishing her tail from one side to the other a few times. 

“Talking to spirits again?” She cocked her head to the side, golden eyes fixed on him. She blinked slowly, her feline mannerisms almost indistinguishable from those of a real cat. 

Uryū stood straight and adjusted his glasses, easing his school bag off his shoulder. “Is Urahara-san down in the basement?” Usually, if the shopkeeper wasn’t annoying him as soon as he arrived, there was a good reason for it, and that reason was most often that he was in the shop’s underground training facility, probably working on whatever project had most recently consumed his attention. 

Yoruichi made a disgruntled sound, which Uryū took for an affirmation, and he crossed the storefront to settle himself behind the recently-installed counter, placing his bag down on the surface near the till and perching himself on the stool that sat against it. A few thuds from overhead informed him that someone was running around upstairs, probably Jinta. He ignored it; unless one of the children managed to break a hole in the ceiling, he didn’t much care what they did. Yoruichi hopped up on the counter beside him, and he automatically reached for her before stopping his hand and diverting it for his bag instead. 

“Ishida-kun,” she whined, “you never pet me anymore!”

Uryū glared at her. “That would be extremely inappropriate, Yoruichi-san.”

“Why? You did it before.” Yoruichi nudged his hand with her head, but he withdrew it, removing his homework and textbooks from his bag and laying them out in a neat stack on the counter. One of the benefits of working at a shop that did no business was having plenty of time to complete his assignments. Not that they took him long. 

“Yes. When I thought you were actually a cat.”

“I _am_ actually a cat. See? Ears, fur, everything.” Her tone was lilting, and he narrowed his eyes at her. 

“Absolutely not.” Uryū, much to his own chagrin, felt his ears beginning to heat. Whatever her claims, actually witnessing her transformation from cat into person was… he cleared his throat awkwardly and elected not to think about it. It hadn’t been one of his prouder moments, and he was still sour with her over it. Resolved to ignore her, he turned towards his homework, intercepting her when she made to lay down on top of his papers, long fingers closing around her middle and lifting her away from them before she could dig her claws in. 

“You do realize that you’re touching me right now, don’t you?”

Uryū spluttered, releasing her immediately, where she fell easily to the floor, landing with almost no noise. Well, except her laughter, anyway, which he did his best to ignore, digging back into his homework, red-faced and annoyed.

* * *

He was just finishing with his last problem for maths when the sliding door to the back of the shop opened, admitting a fair-haired man garbed entirely in forest-green and white, a bucket hat shading the majority of the upper half of his face. Kisuke Urahara had what seemed to be permanent five o’clock shadow, and walked with a cane that everyone knew wasn’t just a cane, though Uryū himself didn’t know exactly what it was instead. 

“Ishida-kun,” he greeted, producing a fan from his sleeve and tapping it, still closed, against his chin. “How’s business?”

Uryū gave him a flat look, arching an eyebrow. Urahara opened the fan and covered the lower half of his face with it. Uryū suspected he often did this as a poor attempt at concealing his amusement. “Tessai should be back with what you need for dinner soon,” he continued, nonplussed by the lack of an outright answer to his initial question.

Uryū nodded, placing his school things back in his bag and hopping down from the stool on the counter, moving to duck past Urahara through the door he’d left open. But the shop owner’s hand caught him by the shoulder, too fast to track, though it held him only loosely. “Be careful on your patrol tonight.”

Uryū blinked at him. “Why? Have you sensed something?”

“Who? Me? Sensed what?” Urahara fluttered the fan in front of his face. “I have no idea what you mean, Ishida-kun.” His hand dropped, and he stepped away, leaving Uryū free to continue his way into the back of the building. 

He resisted the urge to roll his eyes, but only just. Urahara could be annoyingly obscure sometimes, occasionally reverting to the pretense that he was literally nothing more than an ordinary shopkeep, never mind the fact that he lived with a talking cat and two supernaturally strong children. But Uryū rarely called him on it—the tenuous equilibrium that existed in the shop might depend on that. 

Instead, he made his way to the kitchen, digging out the ingredients they had on-hand for dinner. Tsukabishi, the only person in the house besides himself who could cook to any degree at all, entered the room not five minutes after Uryū had started to chop the green onions, laying a paper grocery bag on the counter and taking up a knife himself. 

They spoke sparingly, but compared to the kind of conversation he endured from the rest of the household, Tsukabishi’s was quite normal. He asked Uryū about the events of the school day, and listened politely as he described his latest handicrafts club meeting, and provided in turn an update on the minor disasters Uryū had missed as the residents of Urahara Shop went about their exceedingly bizarre daily lives. It was a familiar pattern, and when they had nothing to say anymore, they simply lapsed into silence, passing each other utensils or ingredients as necessary and moving efficiently through the process of producing an industrial quantity of stir-fry. 

Dinner itself was always a bit of a circus here. Uryū, who was used to eating alone, still wasn’t quite accustomed to having to defend items in his bowl from errant chopsticks, usually wielded by Yoruichi, or, oddly enough, Ururu. It was rather interesting that Tsukabishi-san, who was six and a half feet tall, usually only finished half the bowls that little girl did. 

Maneuvering his dinner to avoid a diving pair of utsensils from a (mercifully fully clothed) Yoruichi, Uryū glared at her and lifted another mushroom to his mouth. On the other side of the table, Jinta belched, earning him a frown from Tsukabishi, which he wilted under. 

“Er… excuse me.”

His contriteness vanished when one of his peppers disappeared, filched by Ururu, who was at every time but meals perhaps the meekest child Uryū had ever met. Jinta dove for her bowl, which she lifted out of his way without looking at him, too intent on examining Uryū’s red onions. He sighed and tilted his bowl slightly. She gave him a mild smile as she swiped them off the top of his rice, and he tried not to consider how unsanitary this all was. 

“So Tessai,” Urahra said, “did you find anything?”

Tsukabishi shook his head. “No. After this morning, I detected no additional activity, and a search of the site produced nothing.” His dark brows knit together, and he handed his leftovers to Yoruichi, folding his large arms across his chest. 

“Hollow?” Uryū asked, keeping his tone disinterested. 

“Mm,” the big man replied, shaking his head. “I thought so. I suppose we will see soon enough.”

* * *

At midnight precisely, Uryū’s cell phone buzzed on his low bedside table, and he sat up in his futon, rubbing at his eyes before reaching over for his glasses and settling them on his nose. Around him, the house was quiet, but that didn’t necessarily mean anything. Through his wall, he could hear the faint sound of Jinta snoring in the room he shared with Ururu, and he detected the very small amount of reiatsu Tsukabishi gave off just down the hall, but both Yoruichi and Urahara’s reiatsus were absent. They were probably in the basement.

Folding his futon neatly, Uryū shed his pajamas and donned the white uniform that hung in his closet, adjusting the mantle so that it lay flat. White was not a stealth color by any means, but that didn’t concern him. He wound his silver prayer beads around his wrist a few times, letting the five-pointed cross dangle comfortably, then pulled his curtains back and opened his bedroom window. 

Clambering up onto the sill, Uryū paused as a low rumble of thunder rolled through, glancing to the sky, where the stars were cloaked in clouds, making them impossible to see. Shaking his head, he launched himself out the second-story window and jumped to the ground below, landing lightly and striking out westward, choosing one of his usual routes in the absence of any particular reason to pick another instead. 

The rain itself started back up again within twenty minutes of his rounds, and the first fat drop of water landed on the crown of his head. It was warm, but not as much so as the ones that fell in summertime. Within seconds, it was a proper shower, and rather than be soaked through, Uryū manifested an invisible disc of reiryoku, shielding himself from the inclement weather and leaving his hands free. 

He was passing his school when he felt it, the first flicker of something on the very edge of his spiritual awareness. It was barely more than a blip, but he remembered Urahara’s warning from earlier and chose not to dismiss it, instead orienting himself in the direction of the disturbance and increasing his speed, gathering reishi beneath his feet and pushing himself into the air with _hirenkyaku_. The technique took him over the roofs, flashing several meters at a time in his haste to cross the majority of Karakura town. 

As he moved, the niggling feeling at the edge of his senses grew, until it was a perceptible weight there. At first, it seemed to be one enormous presence, but as Uryū drew closer, he differentiated the feeling into several distinct signatures. 

Most of them were Hollows. Uryū’s teeth clenched; revulsion rose in him, a heat just under his skin, prickling along the surface as every part of him rebelled against the idea of such creatures in proximity to the living. He could not explain his disgust with them—he knew that they had once been alive, once been human, and if there was some way to return them to their humanity, he liked to believe he would take it. But… 

Another reiatsu signature flared in the same area, and for a moment, his step faltered. That was… 

_Shinigami_. 

There was an unfamiliar shinigami in Karakura, fighting a large cluster of Hollows. 

Uryū hesitated, taking a half-step forward in the air, then halting awkwardly. There were so many reasons for caution, even for turning and leaving the situation alone. But he wasn’t sure any of them were good enough. For a moment, he watched the rain sheet past him, unable to go either forward or back, his hand clenched over his silver pentacle, pressing it hard into his palm, but then the reiatsu flared again, more weakly this time, and he decided. 

With a leap, he bounded forward, riding the flow of reishi as fast as he could. Houses flew by beneath him, and finally the scene in question resolved itself in the foreground. They were all in a large clearing just outside of the town itself. Over the course of his trip, two of the Hollow signatures had disappeared—he could only assume this shinigami had dealt with them. Four yet remained, an unusually large cluster. He wondered what had drawn them here, but there was little time to consider the implications. 

As Uryū approached, two of the Hollows leapt at once, converging upon the spot where the shinigami was. The figure—a woman, surely, for she was far too small to be a man—jumped back, landing hard several meters away. A crack of lightning lit up the clearing for a moment, reflecting off the trail of blood she left behind. Her focus was forward, and she held the white blade of a sword towards the Hollows, her shoulders rising and falling with heavy breaths. 

Uryū landed as the third Hollow, using the attack of its allies as a screen, darted forward. It had a long, snakelike body, and before either Uryū or the shinigami could react, it struck, opening its jaws wide to expose two dripping fangs, which it sank into the meat of the shinigami’s shoulder. She cried out, and the bright glow of her sword flickered, then dimmed entirely, leaving her holding a plain katana. 

Uryū knew less about how shinigami weapons worked than he might have liked, but even he knew that was bad. The Hollow retracted slightly, rearing back to strike her again. Hissing a breath from between his teeth, Uryū threw himself forward, reaching out with an arm to hook the shinigami around the waist, leaping clear of the attack, which slammed into the ground, kicking up dust which was swiftly beaten down again by the rain. 

He skidded to a stop at the end of his leap, grimacing when he felt the distinct warmth of the shinigami’s blood beginning to seep into his white sleeve. 

“Wha—?” Her eyes, clouded by something, turned upwards, and she lifted her head to get a look at him. Beneath him, her muscles twitched and stiffened, in a way that he didn’t think had anything to do with her will. Poison, probably. 

“Shinigami. Can you fight?” Uryū’s eyes narrowed behind his glasses, searching hers. She went rigid in his grip, using her free hand to push off from his arm, righting herself with a stumble. It was hard to tell how much she was bleeding, considering the black shihakusho she wore, but if the smear on his sleeve was anything to go by, she would need medical attention soon. 

“I… you can see me?” Her mouth hung slightly ajar, and the dazed look had not cleared from her eyes. The temptation to sigh was great, but the blunt response he was inclined to halted halfway up his throat when the fourth Hollow moved in. This one had a massive tail with what looked like a mace on the end of it, and the appendage whistled through the air with a dull sound. 

“Move!” He commanded, and either the wisdom in the command was obvious or she reacted on instinct, but the shinigami jumped back, in the opposite direction from Uryū, the Hollow’s tail crashing into the space they had occupied, now between them. 

The other two Hollows, both smaller and quadrupedal, seemed to prefer attacking as a unit, which was odd, but not unheard of, and they tried again to converge on the shinigami. She staved one off with a swipe of her sword, cutting a line into its mask, which spiderwebbed into a network of cracks, but did not shatter it. Uryū intervened on the other side, leaping away from an attack by the snakelike Hollow and landing at her back. Manifesting a disk of reishi in front of his palm, he braced his left hand with his right and bent his knees to absorb the Hollow’s charge, pushing back against it with a burst of reiatsu. 

The blunt hit stunned it, and Uryū brought his knee up, jumping to hit it in the chin. The blow connected, and split the Hollow’s mask nearly in half, a large portion of the right side cracking off and falling away. He frowned at the glimpse of human face beneath. 

Behind him, he heard one of the Hollows wail, and felt its reiatsu shudder as it disappeared, banished by the shinigami’s blade. He glanced over his shoulder, noting that she turned now towards his foe, and he repeated his earlier strategy, moving to cover her back. The Hollow he’d weakened didn’t take long for her to finish off, he presumed, and he ducked out of the way of another swipe from the fourth one’s tail. 

She appeared at his shoulder, breathing hard enough that he could hear her even over the pounding of the rain. She moved forward, but her first step became a lurch, and she would have fallen to her knees had he not reached out to steady her. The other two Hollows, made more cautious by the death of the first pair, approached slowly, staying well out of range of the shinigami’s blade. 

“You… I won’t last much longer,” she said, one eye closing as she brought her free hand to the wound in her shoulder. “I need to… lend you my power. With it, you can finish them off.” She met his eyes grimly, wavering slightly on her feet. 

Uryū felt his lip curl. “That will not be necessary,” he informed her, voice hard. 

“But—”

He silenced the protest with a swift shake of his head. His eyes fell to her right arm. “Your grip is sure on your sword. Your legs are failing you, but mine will not.” 

He lowered himself, presenting his back to her, though he would have preferred not to. It was leagues better than the alternative. Apparently understanding his meaning, she climbed onto his back, surprisingly light. He wrapped his hands around her knees and held them in place, feeling her free arm, bloody and thin, slide around to grip the front of his uniform, in front of his clavicle. 

“Don’t let go,” she told him, and he nodded solemnly. 

Any further strategizing would have to wait, however, because the snakelike Hollow had finally run out of patience, perhaps rendered reckless by the prospect of two particularly reiryoku-saturated souls to devour. It struck, and Uryū was barely able to get them out of the way in time, his _hirenkyaku_ faltering as he adjusted to the extra burden of carrying the shinigami. She hissed as the sharp motion jolted her, probably aggravating a wound, but her grip on her sword held steady. 

“We’re going in from above,” he informed her, and he felt her nod. 

Launching himself directly upward as the other Hollow’s tail swept in from the side, Uryū used it as a springboard to carry them even higher, flipping them over in midair to get the right orientation for their incoming strike. It wasn’t intuitive to him to lead with his right side, but he did, because she held the sword on that side, and needed to get close enough to deliver a decisive blow to its mask. 

He didn’t know how strong her arms were, if indeed she was poisoned, so in the air he kicked off another small platform of reishi, driving them downwards with much greater speed. Even soaking wet, his hair blew back from his brow, and they left a trail of water and blood behind them as they flew, curving in towards the tailed Hollow from the side. 

It couldn’t react fast enough, and though it raised its appendage to try and swipe them out of the air, it missed over the shinigami’s head by several feet, and they bypassed it still at full speed. He felt the jarring impact of her sword on its mask, throwing them off-kilter, and adjusted quickly with another _hirenkyaku_ step, but they still landed hard, Uryū absorbing the brunt of the impact with his knees as his teeth clacked together, barely avoiding biting his own tongue.

“Left!” The shinigami’s cry goaded him just in time, and he actually felt the brush of the snakelike Hollow’s fang against his pant leg, where it left a tear, passing centimeters from his skin. The fangs seemed incorporated into the mask, which would make it a bigger risk to attack directly. It also had greater speed and flexibility than the other one, which meant they’d have to be faster still. 

Worst of all, he could feel the grip the shinigami had on his shirt weakening, a sure sign that she was succumbing to whatever poison worked its way through her system. Uryū jumped grimly into a series of dodges as the Hollow, enraged by its near miss, attacked them several times in quick succession, darting in from seemingly-random angles each time. 

He could feel himself beginning to tire as well. They had to end this, soon, or he would be forced to more drastic measures, and he had no desire to deal with the fallout if that happened. Not tonight.

Another streak of lightning split the sky, and Uryū clenched his jaw. “Once more, shinigami,” he said, and her grip tightened again. 

“My arm…” she murmured, and he glanced down. The hand with her sword in it was shaking now, and her fingers looked loose around the hilt. Sucking a breath in through his teeth, Uryū adjusted his hold on her, moving her knee back into the crook of his elbow and pushing his hand forward to reinforce her grip on her sword, closing it over hers. He doubted he’d be able to use it like she could, but as long as her hand was on it and her heart was _in_ it, it should function like normal. 

One of his gloved fingers landed on the hilt itself, and he felt _something_ , like a ripple in his reiryoku, but he ignored it. Whatever properties these shinigami swords had were none of his concern. He took to the air again, this time circling around the Hollow as quickly as he could. It followed, massive coils unwinding, and tracked his progress, the slitted eyes behind its mask fixed on the two of them. 

It struck at the same time as Uryū jumped, its nose slamming into the ground as he alighted on its tail, following the near-circle its body made, determining his trajectory by its spine. Its scales were wet and slick, and twice he nearly lost his footing, saving himself with hasty applications of _hirenkyaku_. It tried to attack him, still, but he kept them both as close to its own body as he could, doubting it wanted to risk injecting itself with its own poison. 

It lurched viciously underneath him as he approached its head, and he had to let go of the shinigami’s left leg for a moment to stabilize them by grabbing onto a short, bony protrusion near the base of its skull. She yelped as she was suddenly overbalanced to one side, but squeezed her knees around him and stayed on. Three more steps got them to the crown of its head. 

“Now!” They swung together, before the Hollow could try again to throw them off, and though the positioning made the blow awkward, their combined strength drove her sword through the mask, shattering the bone-white material and the Hollow behind it as well, which dematerialized into white reishi particles. 

They fell, and, exhausted, Uryū couldn’t slow them with _hirenkyaku_ , so he twisted in the air as well as he could, aligning them so that shinigami was in front of him and landing on his back, distributing the impact across his whole body. Her weight coming down on top of him right after knocked the breath from his lungs, and he struggled to recover, pulling in air shakily. He lay there for several minutes, by his own estimation, and in that time, the shinigami did not move. He could feel her breathing, but it was shallow, and she was unresponsive, most likely unconscious. 

Uryū wasn’t sure what to do. This woman was a _shinigami_ , someone who was his enemy. Someone who would probably kill him if she knew who he was, _what_ he was. It would probably work out better for him if he let her die. Even her kind died, and like everyone else, they were born again in the other world—she would become human, by his reckoning a much better thing to be. 

But. It would be dishonorable of him to let a comrade die when he could prevent it. And however forced and necessary it had been, for however short a time, they had been comrades. He owed her consideration for that, and a Quincy never left debts unpaid. He didn’t know how to save her life, or if she would recover on her own, but he did know where to take her so that she had the best chance of survival. So he would do that, and consider his obligations met. 

With great effort, he hauled himself to his feet, staggering slightly when a wave of exhaustion hit him all at once, but shook his head. Once he was sure he was steady, he gathered the shinigami up, placing her over his shoulder in a rescue carry. He’d have to take the long way back to the shop, but with luck, if he hurried, he’d make it back in enough time.

* * *

She was still breathing when he mounted the front steps to Urahara’s, banging the side of his fist against the door. It took only a few seconds for someone to slide it open, and the proprietor of the establishment blinked at him, a strange smirk on his face. 

“Well, well. Look what the cat dragged in.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Term dictionary:
> 
>  _Hirenkyaku_ \- 飛廉脚 - Literally "flying screen step." It's basically the Quincy version of shunpo. Uryū can use it, but he's by no means an expert yet, hence his tiring out pretty quickly.
> 
> Initial impressions much appreciated, if you want to let me know what you thought.


	2. Agitate

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Agitate: _transitive verb_ , \ˈa-jə-ˌtāt\\. 
> 
> 1\. to move with an irregular, rapid, or violent action  
> 2\. to excite and often trouble the mind or feelings of

Afternoon sunlight streamed in through the window by the time Rukia awoke, cracking her eyelids and flinching back from the sudden whiteness in her vision. She moved one arm up, placing the crook of her elbow across her eyes, taking stock of her physical condition. Her fingers and limbs moved at her commands, but they felt sluggish, slower and more clumsy than usual, as though the air around her were denser. Her shoulder ached, a deep, throbbing pain that pulsed in time with her heartbeat. 

It took her several minutes to recall how she’d ended up in this situation. There had been the Hollows, yesterday, after she’d received orders to go to Karakura town. She hadn’t expected there to be so many—the report had said there was only one. 

But she had found six, too many for her to realistically fight by herself, even with shikai. She needed more practice with it—but still, she’d been prepared to face them down at the cost of her life. That was her duty as a member of the Gotei 13. 

And then… that human had appeared, and one of the Hollows had bitten her, injecting her with some kind of poison that made it hard to move. Sode no Shirayuki had receded from her mind, and Rukia had been left with nothing but her sealed zanpakutō and the assistance of someone she didn’t know. 

She supposed he must also be the reason she was here, because the last thing she could recall was falling. Grimacing, she took in a deep breath, dropping her arm away from her eyes and bracing it on the futon underneath her. “Ngh…” Her arms trembled as she used them to push herself up into a seated position. Rukia wavered for a few seconds, but her palms on the blankets beside her steadied her, and she took the opportunity to examine her surroundings. 

The room was neat, almost to the point of being generic. Other than a desk with a lamp on it and an orderly bookshelf, there wasn’t any furniture other than the futon, and nothing lay strewn on the floor or out of place at all. She recalled the Thirteenth’s barracks and grimaced. Very few of them were so neat as this. 

A knock sounded on the door to her right, and Rukia turned towards it, tensing. “Pardon me, shinigami-san, but I need to check your injuries.” 

Rukia blinked. “I… all right.” What other choice did she have?

The door slid open and admitted a man in green, who carried a cane tucked under one arm. His hand was placed atop the striped hat on his head, and he wore a tilted smirk, like something amused him inordinately. Draped over his shoulder was a black cat, its golden eyes keen on her as they entered. 

A large man with a dark complexion followed them, wearing an apron and carrying what looked like a box of medical supplies. The two men exuded faint reiatsu, but nothing extraordinary for humans in this area, something that seemed wrong in a way she couldn’t quite put her finger on. 

The one with the hat settled easily on the ground, flopping down with a sort of graceless, casual air that didn’t do anything to ease her apprehension. She felt strange, like her power was far away, and she had no idea who these people were or what they wanted. The tall man settled next to her in seiza while the other one set his cane down next to him. The cat hopped into his lap, stretching itself over one of his legs, and he stroked its back almost absently. Both of them had their eyes fixed on her though, silver and gold, and it was… disconcerting. 

“Ishida-kun tells me he found you out fighting off half a dozen Hollows last night,” the man with the hat said, producing a fan from somewhere in his clothes and opening it in front of his face. It made it even harder to tell what he was thinking, and Rukia pursed her lips. 

“I was.” She didn’t elaborate.

The man’s eyes crinkled slightly at the corners while the other one gently loosened the bandages around her shoulder. The sure way his hands moved informed her that he knew what he was doing, and so she let him do it. Whether Rukia would have chosen it or not, she recognized that she likely owed these people her life, and they seemed to know what she was, from the way they spoke so easily of Hollows. 

“You’d be Thirteenth, then, right? It’s been a while since one of you shinigami showed up here.” He moved the fan a bit, stirring the loose ends of his pale hair, his other hand moving to rub behind the cat’s ear. The animal leaned into the touch, moving its eyes from her for the first time since it had entered the room. 

Rukia hissed softly when the bandages came away from her wound, and the large man grimaced apologetically. 

“I am.” It seemed pointless to lie to him; he obviously already knew. “My name is Rukia Kuchiki; I’m an unseated member of the Thirteenth.” There was a pause; he still watched her keenly, though what he was looking for, she had no idea. “…what exactly happened to me? I remember defeating the Hollows, and then nothing.”

He showed no reaction to her name, which was honestly something of a relief. Rukia let herself relax minutely as the man in the apron swapped out her bandages, winding the new ones firmly, but not uncomfortably. Folding the fan closed, the other smiled a little wider. 

“Well, you suffered rather serious reiryoku depletion, firstly. The Hollow’s poison nearly killed you. If Ishida-kun had made it back here any later, you probably would have died.” He shrugged, tapping the closed fan against his chin. “Even so, it will probably take you a significant period of time to recover. This isn’t exactly a reishi-rich environment like Soul Society, and we don’t have anyone on hand who can do a reiatsu restoration, you know?” He hummed in the back of his throat, glancing up towards the ceiling, but then moved his eyes back down to her. 

“But If you’re interested in a gigai, I can get you one of those. Might help speed things along a little if you don’t have to maintain that form in this world.” 

Rukia considered it. She still intended to find out what all those Hollows were doing here in the first place—it was her duty as a shinigami to find and eliminate any threats on that scale. Her orders had not changed, but if she was to be limited this way, she would need to ensure she recovered as quickly as possible. Decided, she nodded. “I think that would be for the best.” She didn’t know where this man got his gigai from, but if he had the supplies, she wasn’t going to turn them down. 

“Excellent,” the man replied, standing. The cat hopped out of his lap and sat next to his foot, swishing its tail. “I’m Kisuke Urahara, by the way. That’s Tessai, and this here is Yoruichi.” He indicated the cat, who flicked an ear as if in acknowledgement. 

“Pleased to meet you,” Rukia replied, unwilling to forgo her manners even in this situation. 

“Oh?” he replied, his smile turning lopsided. “We’ll see.”

* * *

Tessai had pronounced her well enough to move around, and after she was fitted into her new gigai, Rukia spent about an hour browsing Urahara’s various wares. The front of the store was mostly candy, she discovered, but in the back he had a wide variety of shinigami items. She had a feeling he was running the store illegally, but since they’d saved her life and given her a discount on the gigai, she figured she could pretend not to know that, for now. 

It didn’t seem like anyone did much minding of the store. The two children who lived here were sweeping the front, and she had no idea where Urahara had gone. Tessai had left a few minutes ago, to go buy groceries, he said. Left more or less to herself, Rukia flipped open her denreishinki and pressed the center button. 

Nothing yet. It wasn’t even registering the correct number of Hollows from the night before, actually. Her brows drew together, and she sighed, folding it closed again and replacing it in her pocket. She wore a loose pair of pants and an Urahara Shop t-shirt, since there hadn’t been anything else laying around that would fit her. The pockets were useful, though. She wondered if the Shinigami Women’s Association would sponsor an effort to get shihakusho made with pockets. 

There was a spike in the noise level outside, but before she could go determine the cause, the door opened, and the boy from the night before stepped inside, closing it behind him and removing his shoes before stepping into the store proper.

He caught sight of her then, stopping mid-step and blinking at her from behind his glasses. For a moment, neither of them said anything, but then he approached the counter she sat at, laying the bag he was carrying on the surface. He didn’t speak to her, and Rukia frowned. 

“I wanted to say thank you,” she said, swinging her legs where they dangled off the stool. “For… helping, with the Hollows.” She felt a flare of shame; Hollows at that level were something she should have been able to handle on her own. 

He scoffed softly, almost under his breath. “I don’t need any thanks from a shinigami,” he said, still not looking in her direction. 

She bristled, feeling her embarrassment take a quick turn into irritation. “Excuse me?” she asked, sharpening her tone to a fine point. 

“You heard me.” 

Rukia gritted her teeth, trying to bottle her anger. However rude he was, he _had_ still helped her. 

“You’re in my spot. Move.”

That did it. “What is _wrong_ with you?” she hissed, not budging. 

He finally deigned to glance her way, and the chill in the expression could have rivaled Byakuya’s. Perhaps that was why it only made her angrier. He said nothing else, merely stared at her, and she realized he was waiting for her to vacate the stool. Rukia crossed her arms over her chest, hooking her feet into the crossbar. 

“No. I don’t think I will.” 

His lips thinned, and for a moment, she wondered how far he would take the dispute. But instead of escalating the matter, he simply moved behind the counter and stood, two feet to her left, and laid out the contents of his bag, picking up a pencil and cracking one of the books he’d removed. Methodically putting implement to paper, he studiously disregarded her presence, which was annoying because she was basically stuck in the stool now, since she’d resolved not to give it up. 

They were still like that ten minutes later when Urahara reappeared. He glanced from one to the other, a broad smile cracking his face. 

“You two are getting along well, I see.” 

They leveled matching glares at him, but that only amused him more, and he left the room chuckling.

* * *

Rukia sighed, closing her denreishinki for what felt like the thousandth time. Still nothing new—no Hollows, and her orders remained to observe and report. Pressing her lips together, she laid the device down on the desk in front of her, her upper body following with a huff. Propping her head on her folded arms, she tried not to think about the gnawing at the stomach of her gigai. 

From the occasional chatter she heard filtering up from the floor below, the rest of the household was still eating dinner. Tessai had invited her to partake, but she’d refused, claiming not to be hungry. She’d done it for her pride, but admittedly she regretted the choice now. Even if that insufferable human was the one who made it, she should eat. But she couldn’t bring herself to walk down there now and admit she’d lied to them, that she didn’t have the know-how or the resources to obtain her own food here. 

Her stomach rumbled, and Rukia groaned, muffling the sound by pressing her forehead against her arms and capturing the noise in the little echo chamber between her face and the wooden surface of the desk. Because of this, she almost missed the sound of a knock at the door. 

Immediately, she shot back upright, shaking her head at the wave of nausea produced by such abrupt motion. “Come in,” she called, more interested in appearing as though she was not enduring any significant hardship than who, exactly, it was outside her room. 

She regretted that, too, when it opened and admitted the human from the night before. Ishida, Urahara had called him, though he hadn’t introduced himself to her at any point. She would have thought that rude, except she hadn’t exactly introduced _herself_ either. He carried a small tray, and she swallowed against her immediate salivary reaction when the smell of miso and mackerel hit her olfactory system, pungent and delicious. 

He wore an expression she could not decipher, his mouth faintly downturned and his brows knitted. Before she could open her mouth to say anything, he’d taken half a dozen steps in from the door and set the tray down on the edge of the desk. “Eat,” he said, and though he phrased it in the imperative, there was no bite in his tone. “You’ll need it, with the gigai.” 

He turned to leave, and Rukia, still tongue-tied, found she didn’t have the words to stop him. Instead, her hand shot out, grabbing the sleeve of the light shirt he wore. His eyes rounded, and he halted, turning back halfway to face her with the same expression as a wary rabbit. She suppressed a smile.

“This is your room, isn’t it?” Rukia blinked. That was not what she’d meant to say, but it was close enough, she supposed. 

His frown deepened fractionally. “I use it.” His free arm moved, but only to adjust his glasses. She was reminded for a moment of Nanao, and a bolt of insight flashed through her like lightning. Aware that she still physically held him in place, she eased her grip on his sleeve. When he didn’t immediately resume his progress towards the door, she took a breath. 

“I’m sorry.”

The rabbit-look was back, and she decided to elaborate, since he didn’t look like he’d have the wherewithal to respond anytime soon. “I don’t… I didn’t intend to disrupt your life like this. If you’d prefer it, I could leave tomorrow.” She wasn’t exactly sure where she’d go, but Rukia was resourceful. She could figure _something_ out. 

“That won’t be necessary,” he replied, shaking his head. For a moment, he grimaced slightly, then sighed. “I apologize as well. It is not… I should not have been so short with you this afternoon.” He turned the rest of the way back towards her, inclining himself in a bow. 

Whatever she’d expected, it wasn’t that. It wasn’t that people never apologized to her or bowed—if anything, it happened too often these days—but she certainly would not have anticipated him doing so. Her lips parted, only to seal shut again. She bit the lower one, considering him. He remained lowered for several seconds, then slowly straightened himself out. 

“Would you like to stay?” she asked, indicating her tray of food with a gesture. On closer inspection, it was miso soup, fish, and rice. Simple, but tempting in a way food hadn’t been in a while. She wouldn’t be able to ignore the hollow spot in her stomach for much longer. “Unless you have somewhere else to be.”

He arched a brow, then carefully settled himself on the floor. Rukia followed suit, moving off the desk chair to sit cross-legged in front of him, bringing the tray down with her. She took up the bowl first, warming her fingers around it. She briefly entertained the fantasy of scarfing everything as fast as she could, but banished it in favor of a more measured approach. 

“Urahara-san called you Ishida,” she started, after her first sip. The flavor of it burst over her tongue, and she let it linger there for a while. “Is that what I should call you also?” She needed _something_ to address him by, but she didn’t want to assume. 

He sat in a rigid seiza, his closed fists resting at his knees, eyes mostly out the window. It was raining again, but more gently than the previous night, the drops tapping softly against the pane of glass, tracing jagged trails downward. Her question prompted him to shift his eyes to her, and he inclined his head. 

“Uryū Ishida. Ishida is fine.” 

Chewing over a bit of fish, Rukia nodded, then swallowed. “I’m Rukia Kuchiki.” She paused. “I prefer Rukia, honestly, but you don’t have to use it if you don’t want to.” 

“I suppose I will need to call you something other than shinigami, eventually.” She glanced up, unsure how to take that, but his expression gave little away. But then one corner of his mouth curled, almost imperceptibly subtly, and she snorted. Rukia felt her shoulders ease a little. 

“This shop…” she started, searching for the right words to the question. “Is anyone who lives here actually related?” She set her chopsticks down or a moment to pick up the cup of tea resting in one corner of the tray, blowing a soft ripple in the steam that rose from it. 

He shrugged. “Not to my knowledge. I have the feeling that Urahara-san, Tsukabishi-san, and Yoruichi-san have known each other for a very long time, but I’m not sure when he adopted the kids. I only moved in about a year ago.” He was still sitting formally, but his attention had re-centered on the conversation entirely, and something about him looked a little less stiff now. 

“Yoruichi-san?” She blinked. “The cat?”

Ishida coughed into his hand, turning his head slightly to the side. The tip of his visible ear was pink. “She’s… not actually a cat. It’s probably better not to ask. You’ll find out eventually.”

Rukia felt her eyebrows climbing her forehead, but she didn’t press the point. Silence descended for as long as it took her to make it halfway through her rice, and then she broke it softly. “So… you don’t have family around here, then?” It had been a long time since she was in the living world, but she didn’t think a situation like this one was normal, even now. 

Any ease in his posture was erased as his whole frame tensed uncomfortably, and for a moment, she wished she could pull the words back into her lungs, never to make it out. Rukia held her breath, unsure if this marked the return of this afternoon or not. 

“All the family I care about is dead,” he replied, in such a low murmur she almost didn’t hear him. She felt an uncomfortable clench in her chest, lowering the rest of her food back to the tray. 

“Yeah,” she said. “Mine too.”

At a guess, he had no more idea what to say about that than she did, and the silence stretched like elastic between them. It was hard to know what would snap, or when, and Rukia curled her hands together in her lap, venturing a glance in his direction. Ishida, to her surprise, studied her, his eyes narrow behind his glasses, but she read no condemnation there. 

“If you’re bored here, you could come with me to school tomorrow,” he said. Rukia frowned, and he elaborated. “If any messages come through about Hollows in the area, we’ll both be in the same place. And you won’t have to stay in the shop all day.” 

She considered it. Perhaps she should be offended at the suggestion that she needed anyone’s help dealing with Hollows, but the truth was, she probably did. She felt weak in this gigai, and would probably feel weaker still in her reiryoku-depleted spirit body. She couldn’t release Sode no Shirayuki, and her chances of managing a kidō worth mentioning were slim. But all that had been true last night as well, and the two of them had somehow managed. 

“Okay.” She nodded, and the two of them stood together. Ishida waved off her attempt to remove the tray from the room, assuring her that he would take care of it, and she decided to make an early night of it. Setting her denreishinki near her head, Rukia lay back on the futon, pulling the covers up to her chin. 

Sleep came more easily than she’d expected.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Term Dictionary_ :
> 
> _Denreishinki_ – 伝令神機 – Literally “divine messenger machine.” It’s the thing that looks like a cell phone that Rukia uses in the first arc to pinpoint Hollows and carry her money around and stuff.
> 
> I tend to default to the Japanese for most of the unique items in the series, but sometimes (like with using “shop” instead of “shoten” for Urahara’s place), I’ll use the perfectly serviceable English word, in an effort to keep the gratuitous Japanese to a minimum. Techniques, zanpakutō, cultural clothing items, and the like will all remain Japanese, though.
> 
> I think this story will alternate every other chapter between Rukia’s and Uryū’s POVs. Some of the other characters know way too much to use them that way without giving too many things away too soon and taking all the fun out of it.
> 
> Anyway, as always, I’d love to hear your thoughts.


	3. React

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> React: _intransitive verb_ , /rē-ˈakt/
> 
> 1\. to exert a reciprocal or counteracting force or influence  
> 2\. to change in response to a stimulus

“Rukia-san, we’re going to be late!” 

Uryū thinned his lips and contemplated his umbrella for a moment before putting it into his bag along with his books and writing implements. He heard the door upstairs slide open with force, and the irregular thumping of footsteps on the floor above. Not long after, Rukia bounded down the stairs, snatching the toast out of Tsukabishi’s expectant hand as she passed and stuffing it halfway in her mouth. Her manners had certainly… _relaxed_ in the month she’d spent at the shop. 

Casting her eyes around, she alighted on her school bag, which he was holding in his off-hand, and he held it out to her as she approached. Removing her toast from her mouth and swallowing too much of it at once, she nodded at him. “Thanks, Ishida. Let’s go.”

He hummed a short note in the back of his throat and slid the door open, allowing her to precede him before he stepped out and closed the entrance behind him. The shop’s business hours didn’t begin for some time yet, mostly due to Urahara’s tendency to sleep late.

“Hold on,” he muttered, and Rukia stopped, turning to glance back over her shoulder at him. He didn’t say anything else though, just plucked a piece of lint from the sleeve of her school uniform, discarding it to the side. “Better.” 

She raised an eyebrow, and he shrugged. Setting the strap of his bag over his shoulder, he drew even with her on the sidewalk and they started forward again, following the route to school. Uryū wasn’t sure exactly how Urahara had managed to arrange it so that she wound up in his class, but he chose not to ask. The cover story was rather simple, in truth—Rukia was his cousin, who had moved back to Japan after spending several years overseas. It went some way to explaining the things she didn’t quite get about living here, or he assumed it did anyway.

Glancing overhead, Uryū considered the pale grey of the clouds. “It’s going to rain again,” he observed. 

Rukia followed the direction of his eyes, lifting a hand to shade her own, and frowned. “I forgot my umbrella,” she replied, glancing behind them. 

“No time,” he told her. “The weather might hold until we get there, at least.” 

She nodded slowly, reaching into the pocket of her jacket for that device she carried around. Denreishinki, she told him it was called. Apparently her method of communicating with Soul Society. He peered over her shoulder as she flipped it open. She tilted the screen so he could see it a little better, but the little map that represented Karakura town was empty. 

“No word on that disturbance from last night?” he asked, and she shook her head. 

“No. I’ve reported the others, though. Maybe there’s a pattern we’re not seeing.” They’d dealt with five separate incursions by Hollows in the past month, and on the days in between, Uryū mostly followed Rukia around while she used her sword to perform konsō on any lingering spirits. It was certainly much faster than what he did, which was trying to persuade souls into crossing over on their own. She’d looked at him strangely when he mentioned that, but he wasn’t sure why. 

“Maybe.” He glanced up when a drop of rain pattered on his hair. The clouds overhead were still thin, but it was beginning to drizzle, and they were still a few minutes from the school’s grounds. Opening the front flap of his bag, Uryū slid a hand inside and removed his umbrella, closing the bag back over and wordlessly handing the rain shield to Rukia. 

She blinked down at it, her eyes flicking to his face. Uryū adjusted his glasses. “I have another jacket at school, if it is necessary,” he said. 

Holding the device out in front of her as she walked, Rukia opened it, swinging it back so it protected her from the oncoming water. Frowning a moment, she adjusted her grip, pushing it higher, so that it was over the level of Uryū’s height as well. “Come on,” she said, making a short gesture with her other hand. 

Uryū hesitated, but stepped under the shelter of the umbrella. It was a bit awkward, because held for both of them, it didn’t quite fully protect either, but the rain wasn’t so heavy that it posed a serious inconvenience. “You’re too tall,” she informed him crisply, and he arched a brow. 

“Actually, Rukia-san, I’m fairly certain it is you that is too short.” Predictably, she scowled at him, swatting his arm with the umbrella’s handle, which just disturbed it and dumped a splash of water on her left shoulder. Uryū snorted, watching her try to brush it off, muttering something under her breath. 

She scrunched her face at him. “I guess you don’t want to be under the umbrella after all,” she mused, moving to step away from him, but Uryū caught the metal pole of the contraption halfway up and held it there, preventing her from straying too far. 

“My apologies, Rukia-dono,” he said, far too gallantly for the situation at hand. “I was wrong to suggest that your height was inadequate to any purpose.” 

She gave him a strange, nearly horrified, look for all of a second before cracking a smile. “Pff.” Stepping back in, she took her hand off the umbrella, letting him hold it at a more convenient height. “Yes, well. I suppose I can overlook your poor manners. Just this once.” 

Uryū’s mirth narrowed his eyes before he remembered himself and smoothed his face out. They were approaching the school. No sooner had they made it in the front door than he promptly stepped away from her, folding the umbrella and remaining at a considerable distance. She glanced at him, brows knitted, but someone called her name from over by the shoe lockers, and she turned away, raising an arm and waving to greet Inoue-san and Arisawa-san, who both approached. 

Uryū passed behind another row of shoe lockers to find his own, then ghosted up the stairs to the classroom, greeting no one.

* * *

The sky had cleared up slightly by lunchtime, enough at least that Uryū found it acceptable to settle himself underneath the slight overhang protruding from the stairwell exit on the roof. Technically speaking, he was not permitted to be up here, but that was in truth the entire appeal of it—as it was a prohibited area, no one else was ever present. 

So he watched the runoff from the morning’s rain drip off the roof’s gutters, and tried not to think too much of things best left alone. He didn’t really taste the lunch he’d packed for himself, and found himself surprised to discover that he’d already consumed half of it. Leaning back slightly so that his shoulderblades pressed against the concrete wall, he noted the crepuscular rays of light beginning to break through the cloud cover. They were still weak, and from the looks of things to the west, another storm might roll in before the sun made its appearance in earnest. 

The door, several feet to his left, opened suddenly, and Uryū flinched. He hadn’t even sensed anyone approaching—how careless of him. 

“There you are!” Rukia crossed her arms over her chest, though the satchel dangling from one of her hands ruined any intimidation effect it might have had. 

He tensed. “Is there a Hollow?” He hadn’t sensed any, but he supposed there might be one outside of his effective range. It had happened a few weeks ago, too. 

She shook her head. “No, nothing like that. I just didn’t know where you’d disappeared to.” Rukia pursed her lips, and he got the impression that she was waiting on him to explain something. Maybe it was the way she didn’t move, or say anything further. 

Uryū shrugged. “I’m always here at lunch time.”

She did move, then, taking a few steps over and settling beside him, crossing her legs. “Inoue said I should invite you to lunch.” 

He hummed noncommittally. 

“She also said she’s asked you before, but that you always decline. Arisawa called you a recluse.” Rukia untied the knot at the top of her bundle, letting the cloth fall to the sides, and slid open the lunchbox contained therein. He could smell the soba he’d packed that morning. 

He elected not to respond to that either, though he doubted Arisawa-san’s wording had been anything so delicate as _recluse_.

“Why don’t you eat with them?” she asked, lifting some of the noodles to her mouth. 

He shrugged. “Inoue-san is only being polite.”

There was a pause while Rukia chewed and swallowed. “You think she doesn’t like you?” The curiosity in her tone was hard to miss. 

Uryū turned his head to meet her eyes, arching a brow. “Do _you_ like me?” He intended the question to serve as his answer, delivering it with a delicate, but pointed, emphasis, like a shard of glass.

But to his surprise, she tilted her head to the side, appraising him for a moment as she worked methodically through her food. “I think so,” she said at last, and he snorted, rolling his eyes. 

“A resounding recommendation. I shall have to include it on my resume someday.” At least he’d made his point.

Rukia shook her head. “I didn’t mean it like that. I just meant…” She scrunched her nose, turning her eyes out towards the clouds and making a soft noise of frustration. “I don’t… I haven’t had a lot of friends before.” She tapped her chopsticks on the side of her lunchbox a few times. “I’m not really sure what counts as liking someone or being their friend. I think… we fight well together, and when you aren’t acting like I’m something on the bottom of your shoe, you’re interesting to talk to.” 

She half-smiled, lifting a shoulder. “But on the other hand, I really don’t know much about you. And I guess there’s a lot you don’t know about me either, so… I _think_ so.”

He huffed, the sound halfway between a scoff and a laugh. “I suppose I can’t fault your logic,” he conceded. Her next couple of bites passed in silence, then he ventured a question. 

“What’s it like? Living in the Soul Society?”

Rukia looked down at her food, a heavy breath escaping through her nose. “It depends a lot on where you are,” she said quietly. Her eyes fell closed, but then she opened them again and glanced over at him. “The nobles, they live so well it can scarcely be believed. And the shinigami don’t have it badly, either; even if they don’t have their own houses, they can live in the barracks, and they never need to worry about what they’re going to eat. But… outside the Seireitei, in the Rukongai, things are different.”

Uryū tried to map this onto what he understood of political systems in the living world, and made an educated guess. “Let me guess… the closer it is to this _Seireitei_ , the better?” And what a pretentious name for a place, really.

She blinked, tilting her head to the side. “Yes, actually. Conversely… the further out in the Rukongai you get, the poorer the surroundings. Add to that the fact that souls arrive with no memories of who they were—it can be a chaotic place, especially for people who died as children.”

A breath hissed out from between Uryū’s clenched teeth. He wasn’t so naïve as to believe things like that never happened in the living world, but… “and the shinigami, they what? Don’t care?”

Rukia shifted where she sat. “I honestly don’t know,” she replied. “I used to think they didn’t. Maybe they don’t. But I also know that it would be impossible to feed every hungry soul in the Rukongai. If that’s what the shinigami did with their time, they wouldn’t be able to do anything else. The balance of souls would be thrown off, the living world would be overcome by Hollows—everything would fall apart.”

The balance… Uryū grimaced. He knew what shinigami would do for the sake of the balance. He supposed he even understood it. “Are there so few by comparison?”

Rukia nodded. “At any time, there are only about six thousand shinigami. Some of them have enough reiryoku that they aren’t really in danger of aging or dying, but not most. And then some will inevitably die in battle against Hollows. Others retire, but that’s rare. The Shin’ō Academy replaces the ones we lose.”

“Academy? There’s a _school_ for shinigami?” 

Rukia nodded. “And an entrance exam. Not too different from the living world that way, I suppose.” 

“I suppose not,” he agreed, the words emerging slowly.

From the untied bundle that had once contained her lunch, Rukia pulled out a juice box, something Tsukabishi had purchased from the corner convenience store yesterday at Ururu’s request. Uryū watched her fiddle with the straw wrapper, then turn the box over in her hands, probably trying to figure out what to do with it. Her frown was intent, and she narrowed her eyes at the box like it had offended her somehow. 

“It’s at the top,” he said. “The little silver circle.” With a satisfied _ha_ , she punched the straw through. 

“Thanks.” He nodded, and she took several sips, tentatively at first, but then with more enthusiasm. “It goes both ways, you know. So few of us really know anything about the living world. Part of my division’s duty is to look after this part of the world, but…” 

Uryū pushed his glasses up his nose, tipping his head so that the back of it rested against the cool concrete wall. “If you have questions, you can ask. This world isn’t homogenous, really, but for basic things, I can answer.”

She made a soft noise with a contemplative sound to it, then mimicked his posture again, except that she set her legs straight out in front of her, smoothing the pleats of her uniform skirt. “What’s a mall? I heard Inoue talking with one of her friends about it, but I wasn’t sure I should ask them.”

“Probably not,” he agreed. “Those are fairly ubiquitous. Not even being from overseas would explain not knowing what they are.” Uryū set his hands on his knees, trying to decide which words he wanted to use to explain the concept. He was loath to do so inaccurately or insufficiently. 

“A mall is a collection of stores. They are arranged together in one larger building, usually with wide, roofed corridors between them. They are not an infrequent place for adolescents to spend time, but people of all ages use them sometimes.” A cloud in front of him shifted, throwing the light behind it out at a new angle.

“You’re an adolescent, right?” She turned her head, still against the grey wall behind them, to look at him from the corners of her eyes. “How come you don’t go there?”

He lifted his shoulders and let them fall again. “It is traditionally an activity one does with friends. I don’t have any.”

“Hm.” She crossed one leg over the other at the knee, pulling the last of the juice from the box with a loud noise. Condensation beaded on the outside of it, which she flicked off her fingers with a frown. “Would you take me to one? I was thinking of getting living world souvenirs for some people I know.”

Uryū found himself unsure how to respond. “Wouldn’t you rather go with Inoue-san, or one of the other girls from school?”

“Why?” She bundled the empty juice container with her lunchbox and tied them both up in the cloth again. “Don’t you want to go?”

Uryū didn’t generally like places with so many people, but he found himself nodding anyway, a slight dip of his chin. Well then. “I could. If you wanted to.”

Rukia pushed herself up off the wall and to her feet, smiling slightly. “Good. You can tell me what everything is, so I know what to get.” She shifted her empty lunch containers to her left hand and offered her right down to him. 

He only hesitated a moment before grasping it with his left, pulling himself upright. “Very well.” He paused for a beat, considering her uniform. “You don’t have any clothes besides this and your Urahara Shop uniform, do you?”

She raised a brow, shaking her head. “Should I?”

“Yes, but I’ll take care of it. Leave a bit of time free between dinner and patrol tonight, would you?”

* * *

“Rukia-san,” Uryū began, setting down his tape measure and sewing kit on the desk in her—his, but not at the moment—room, “what, exactly, am I looking at?”

She smiled, her eyes narrowing with the breadth of it. “It’s a design, of course. I was thinking earlier about some of the living world clothes I might like to wear, and I came up with this. Do you think you could make it?” 

Uryū studied the drawing, trying to decide exactly what about it was supposed to correspond to an actual article of clothing. As far as he could tell, he was looking at a badly-rendered cartoon rabbit surrounded by a series of squiggly purple lines, with some vague wording off to the side in what looked like orange crayon. He glanced once more to her face, and suppressed a sigh. 

“Oh. Of course. I will… take your thoughts into consideration, but I am uncertain I could recreate that exactly,” he deadpanned, and she lowered the drawing, setting it on the desk next to his kit. 

“No problem. I understand if you’re still learning.” Uryū took a slow breath, feeling his left eye twitch uncomfortably, then released it, rolling his shoulders back and picking up the tape measure. 

“In any case, I will need to take your measurements. Stand in the center of the room, please.” She moved to comply, and he unrolled a length of the tape measure, far more than he would actually need, and wrapped one end around his right wrist to hold it in place. He started with her neck, taking care to wrap it carefully, then loosen the tape and take a step back to record the number carefully. 

He was not relishing the thought of asking her to lift her arms so he could measure her chest, but to his surprise, she did so without prompting, and displayed no discomfort or suspicion at all. “You’ve been fitted for clothes before,” he observed. 

“Yes. When my brother adopted me, he had a lot of clothes made so I could wear them.” She stood straighter when he moved the tape measure to her waist, pulling it in smaller and recording the third number. 

“Your brother?” Uryū recalled her saying that her family was dead. 

“Mm. He… I don’t really understand it,” she admitted, and sighed through her nose. “He adopted me, and gave me his name, but… that man has never once even looked at me. It doesn’t feel like we’re family at all.” Uryū heard her swallow, a thick sound, like she had to get past something in her throat. Her next breath came out shaky in the silence.

He paused, stepping back and motioning for her to put her arms down. He had measured her bicep and had her wrist between his hands before he replied. “My father and I don’t speak,” he said, focusing on the numbers on front of him rather than her face. “He doesn’t accept what I’ve chosen to do—he believes there is nothing to be gained from so much concern for the dead.”

“I’m sorry,” she murmured at length. He lifted his eyes, meeting hers, then shook his head. 

“I’m not. I think that sometimes in life, we have to make difficult choices. I have lost my father because of mine, but in doing so…” he grimaced, searching for the words. “I gained something, too.”

Rukia’s eyes seemed wide to him, like she was searching for something. He had no idea what it was, though. “What did you gain?”

Uryū felt his mouth curl on one side. “My own pride.”

She let that hang in the air a moment, until he resumed the task of measuring, taking her leg dimensions in case he should need them. While he was crouched, winding the tape around her ankle, she shifted slightly. “So is that how you came to live here? Your father threw you out, and then…?”

He nodded, rising to his feet. “Urahara-san took me in. I work afternoons at the shop, and he insists that covers my rent. I suppose when one considers how much hazard pay I should be earning for my assistance in some of his projects, I can almost believe it.”

She laughed, a full-throated sound, and he felt his smile inch just a little bit wider.

* * *

Uryū frowned down at the bolts of fabric in front of him, eyes narrowed. He drew the tip of his index finger down the first in the series. Mid-weight cotton blend, fairly standard by way of construction material. Not quite the texture he wanted, though. He bypassed the heavy kimono silk immediately. Too formal, and much too warm for a summer garment anyway. The linen wouldn’t breathe enough, either. 

Maybe if he just changed the weight and thread count of the cotton? He should have some slightly better bolts around here somewhere…

“Well, well. It’s been a while since I caught you in here, Ishida-kun.” He didn’t look up at Urahara, at least not initially, opening a cupboard and scanning over the neat labels on the cardboard ends of the bolts, detailing what each fabric was, as well as the color. His hand hovered over a white one—the color seemed to suit her somehow—but then his frown deepened slightly, and he gripped one of the deeper shades of purple. Too dark?

“Is there something you want, Urahara-san?” he asked, when the shopkeeper chose not to leave, nor to elaborate on his presence. 

“Not really,” Urahara admitted. “Just rethinking some things, is all.”

“And you need to do that in this storage room because…?” Uryū turned to face him, but Urahara’s eyes were shaded by his hat, making him even more difficult to read than usual. One thing Uryū had simply learned to accept about living here was that Urahara was always _planning_ , and every time he thought he began to understand the scope of what was going on in the man’s head, Urahara jumped forward another three steps, laughing all the while at anyone who thought they could keep up with him. 

Metaphorically, of course. Though Uryū wouldn’t put it past him to do so literally if the situation arose. 

So when he shrugged, Uryū couldn’t really do anything but sigh. “Will I ever know why you invited me to live here in the first place?” He’d gained a lot from it, of course: he was more adept in his abilities than he ever would have been able to become on his own, and knew things he hadn’t thought would be as important to know as they turned out to be. But it was all to very mysterious purpose, and Uryū wasn’t stupid enough to believe that there was _no_ underlying design. Urahara was a decent person, maybe even a good one, but he _never_ did anything without a reason. 

Urahara leaned his shoulder against the doorframe, lopsided grin firmly in place. “Maybe. I think I’ll give you a chance to figure it out on your own first, though. You might just be smart enough to do it.” With one of his hands, he rubbed absently at the stubble on his chin. 

Uryū selected a particularly soft blended fabric, a bit heavier than the usual 50/50, which would serve quite well. With a sharp tug, he pulled it from the shelf, sliding it out from amongst the dozen other fabrics there. That and the purple should work well enough. “I’m flattered,” he replied dryly, setting the bolt down on a lower shelf while he went to retrieve scissors and other supplies. 

“Rukia-chan says you’re going to the mall tomorrow,” Urahara ventured while Uryū sized up his scissor blade options with a critical eye. He pulled one set out, testing the cut on a swatch he carried for that purpose. There was something viscerally satisfying in the fine-grained sound they made, the slight grinding feel they had to them. The blades needed a sharpen, though—they caught slightly on the first cut. 

“She needs a few items,” he answered, sliding the blades back into their leather casing and setting them on the same shelf. He had a small whetstone around here somewhere…

“Here,” Urahara’s word drew Uryū’s attention, and a small red object flew through the air directly for his face. Scowling, he snatched it from its trajectory a few inches short, then glanced down at it. 

It was a glove, of sorts, primarily red, but with a blue and white pattern of a skull surrounded in flames. “You have appalling taste,” he said, holding the object between his thumb and forefinger to study the design. 

Urahara laughed. “Maybe, but more importantly than the way it looks, you might find it useful. If you strike Rukia-chan while wearing it, you can extract her spirit form from her gigai. I know you two have been doing pretty well without resorting to that, but just in case. Might want to take it out on patrol tonight, test it out a little.” 

Uryū nodded, pocketing the glove. “Sure. Thanks.”

“Don’t thank me yet, Ishida-kun.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Nothing for the term dictionary this time. Apologies to anyone who finds this to be boringly non-actiony. There will be a pretty important fight next chapter by way of apology. But I thought it was necessary to establish how these two were starting to feel out a friendship of sorts. Later plot events kind of depend on it, after all, and I can't rely on what Ichigo's motivations were or what his friendship with Rukia was like, because Ishida is a radically different character.
> 
> I have no idea why I write so many scenes with food, though.


	4. Galvanize

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Galvanize: _transitive verb_ , \ˈgal-və-ˌnīz\
> 
> 1\. to cause (a force that is capable of causing change) to become active  
> 2\. to subject to the action of an electric current, especially for the purpose of stimulating physiologically  
> 3\. to move to action; excite; startle

Rukia smoothed her hands down the front of the dress. It was nothing like the design she’d planned, but she had to admit that it was very nice all the same. The fabric was heavy enough to feel comfortable, but light enough that it swished loosely where it fell around her knees. The high collar wasn’t something she’d have initially chosen for herself, but it compensated for the lack of sleeves, feeling sufficiently modest overall, such that she wouldn’t mind walking around in public in it. 

It fit relatively closely about her until it reached her waist, where it floated away from her softly, and somehow, Ishida had known to include pockets—there was a deep one in either side of the dress, hard to see but easy to make use of. Rukia smiled at herself in the mirror. She wouldn’t have thought she’d like the way she looked in white, but the deep purple stripes—one vertical from her left shoulder, right next to the seam, and the other sitting just beneath her bustline—balanced it well, preventing her from thinking she looked like a ghost, however fitting that might have been. 

He’d even made her shoes from the purple, just ordinary flats, but she appreciated the thought. 

A series of short beeps broke her from her thoughts, and she furrowed her eyebrows, reaching into the pocket of her dress and removing her denreishinki. Flipping it open with her thumb, she opened the message, noting that it was a command from the Seireitei. 

_Return to Soul Society for debrief_.

She frowned. That was unusually terse. The bigger problem, however, was that she had no way of obeying the command. In her state of depleted reiryoku, she wasn’t sure she’d be able to make the journey at all. What was more… she hadn’t finished her mission yet. 

Biting her bottom lip, she stared at the screen for several seconds, her thumb hovering over the button. Then, with a decisive click, she deleted it, shut the device, and returned it to her pocket. 

Three polite knocks sounded on her door, and she stepped over to it, pulling it open to find Ishida standing there. “Ah, Rukia-san. Do I need to make any alterations?” He held a small tin in his hands, presumably a sewing kit, but she shook her head. 

“No, it fits perfectly. You do really good work, Ishida.”

He blinked at her, like maybe he didn’t quite believe her, but ended up shaking his head. “It is nothing. If you are ready, however, we should depart soon. Urahara-san is testing something new in the basement, and I suspect he wants to enlist our help.” His mouth pulled to one side.

“Right. I can go now.”

He nodded, and stepped aside to let her precede him down the stairs. 

“Ishida?”

“Yes, Rukia-san?”

“This pattern… it’s similar to the one on your uniforms.”

“The cross? Yes. It looks better that way.” He pronounced the words unusually slowly, as if wary about something, a far cry from his usual brisk, clipped speech, and she turned back over her shoulder to note that he watched her with an equal amount of caution. 

Rukia didn’t know what to make of that. “I think so too,” she agreed, and he immediately relaxed. “I don’t think all white would have worked very well.”

She felt a fine tremor under her feet, emanating upwards from below, and flinched. “How quickly does the next bus get here?”

“Ten minutes, but I think we can just wait at the stop, don’t you?”

“Yes. Let’s do that.”

They made their escape without being accosted by a mad inventor looking to test his latest creation, and Rukia considered that a great success indeed. Sometimes, Urahara reminded her uncomfortably of some of the shinigami in the Twelfth.

* * *

With a crisp crunching sound, Rukia bit off the end of another stick of pocky, humming to herself as she stared into the various store windows that she passed. Beside her, Ishida was apparently much less interested in their surroundings, mostly moving his eyes around without letting them linger on any one thing for a particular length of time, or so the occasional glance in his direction allowed her to observe. 

She wondered if he actually had any interest in being here, or if he’d simply consented to bring her because she asked. Rukia wouldn’t have guessed him the type, when she first met him, but she understood now that this was a distinct possibility. 

“Hey Ishida,” she said, drawing his attention. “Is there anything here you wanted to do?”

He shifted the bags in his left hand to his right, reaching up to adjust his glasses. “Not in particular, Rukia-san. Though there is a Sunflower Sewing in here somewhere, so if we pass it, I might be inclined to visit.”

She felt herself smile. “I don’t think I’ve ever met a man who enjoyed such feminine hobbies as you do.” 

He arched a brow. “I would have hoped that the Soul Society was past calling some hobbies masculine and other ones feminine, but I suppose that’s a bit much to ask for.” 

Rukia thought he had a point, honestly. “Well, it’s not like everyone thinks that way, I guess. I just meant that it was admirable, that you like what you like without apologizing for it.”

Ishida cleared his throat, turning away to look at something in another shop window. “It’s…” he started, not looking in her direction.

“Nothing? I know. Maybe not to you.” She glanced at the floor, where periodically another purple shoe would appear in her line of vision as she stepped forward. She didn’t even have to think about adjusting her pace to match his anymore—it just happened. Was that normal, if you spent a month consecutively in someone’s presence? 

“Are you feeling any better?” he asked a few minutes later. Lifting her head, she met his eyes, turned back towards her even as he deftly stepped away from a small gaggle of humans who weren’t paying much attention to their trajectories. 

Rukia shrugged. “It’s… strange. I feel physically recovered, but my reiryoku hasn’t really been restored much at all. I still can’t release my zanpakutō, and my kidō’s really no good either.” She couldn’t even open a senkaimon, but she didn’t say that much.

His mouth downturned faintly—Ishida had an expressive face when he forgot he was supposed to be stoic. “Maybe we should talk to Urahara-san about it; he might have some idea what the problem is.” From the dry way he said it, she figured he was making an intentional understatement. Not without warrant, she thought.

“Hm.” Rukia bobbed her head. “But for now, help me out here. I think I want to get my brother something, but I have no idea what.” None of the stores they’d passed so far seemed right, but the problem was, she had absolutely no idea what would be. She felt obligated to think of him, considering, but the things she really _knew_ about Byakuya could be easily counted on her fingers, with room to spare. 

Ishida was giving her a strange look, but it lasted for only a moment. “Well… the best gifts, generally, are the ones the person can and will use, but would never get for themselves, either because they can’t or wouldn't think to.” He shifted so that his hands were in his pockets, though his posture didn’t slouch at all.

Rukia sighed. “That’s going to be tough. Nii-sama doesn’t exactly lack the means to acquire anything he might want.” She glanced over at Ishida, and specifically at the indigo-blue scarf that looped loosely around his neck, and thought of a pristine white one that cost more than the family manor. Sometimes, Rukia had the sense that she didn’t understand the society she was a part of any more than she understood the living world.

“What does he spend most of his time doing?” Ishida’s expression morphed to one of irritation when yelling started up just behind them, and he glared over his shoulder, but it died quickly down into the usual ambient noise level of the mall, which was quite enough, honestly. 

“Well, he’s a captain in the Gotei 13, which means… training his division, administrative tasks, that kind of thing, and also head of the family, which basically means making any household decisions that are necessary and meeting with the council…” She was pretty sure that was what it involved, at least. The extent to which she had no idea what Byakuya did with his time was a bit surprising, when put into words. Did he even have hobbies? She couldn’t imagine him sewing, certainly.

“Oh! And he writes a column for the Seireitei Bulletin. About etiquette, I think.” 

Ishida was frowning again, but it looked thoughtful more than anything. She thought she could tell the difference at this point. “When you write or do paperwork, what implements do you use?”

“Brushes and ink, of course.” As soon as she’d said it, Rukia skipped a step as the realization hit her. “But the living world uses pens.”

He half-smiled, nodding briskly. “And they have enviable efficiency by comparison. But I think you’ll be wanting something a bit better than the standard pen, and I know the right place to find it.”

She followed his stride through several additional corridors, and though their progress was sporadic, interrupted mostly due to Rukia’s inclination to stop and gawk at every new thing, they eventually made it to what looked to be a specialty shop for stationary. Handmade papers were on display in the store windows, from the extremely delicate rice kinds to thick paper she’d never seen before that Ishida told her was called ‘parchment’ and was once very popular in the west. 

The smell of the place was exactly what she would have expected of old fashioned paper and ink, and indeed she found herself temporarily immersed in nostalgia, remembering the first time she’d ever actually had access to those things, which was when she’d enrolled in Shin’ō. Rukia had been lucky enough to know how to read and write already—but that wasn’t true of everyone who passed the entrance exams. There was an air of delicacy and hush to the store that was utterly unlike what was going on outside, almost as if the air particles were loath to move too much, for fear of disturbing the paper. 

The only other person in the shop was the elderly gentleman at the counter, to whom Ishida nodded politely before leading her to the back wall, whereupon a massive selection of writing implements were displayed, sorted by type. The most numerous were the calligraphy brushes, and some of them were truly beautiful, but she had no idea how they were compared to anything Byakuya might already have owned. Rukia was a poor judge of true luxury, she supposed. One kind of silk felt just the same as another to her, even if someone else would have noticed a world of difference. 

But besides the brushes, there were pencils of differing sizes and materials and colors, and then pens as well. She wouldn’t have thought there would be such a variety, but it appeared that there were as many as several dozen types, some variations on others. Ishida gestured her over to where he was standing, and she moved to stop beside him, faced now with a row of somewhat thicker implements, broken down into component pieces. The bodies of the pens were lined up next to one another, and then there was a separate display for various little metal bits, some of which looked like the actual writing tips. 

“You should choose a body and a nib,” Ishida said from beside her. “You’d know your brother’s taste better than I would, though if you’re concerned about his acceptance of western implements, some of the pens are made with maki-e, so you may wish to start there.” He pointed, and she followed the line of his arm to the right place, immediately gravitating that way herself. 

They had both gold and silver, on multiple shades of lacquer, and the effects were striking. Ishida was right: she worried that anything too obviously western would offend her brother’s sensibilities; Soul Society was very much an organization that drew its cultural foundations from a distinct time and place in the living world. But the maki-e patterns were beautiful, and she was contemplating one with a graceful design of cranes in flight before another caught her eye. 

The moment she saw it, she knew it was perfect. Like the crane one, the background was a deep black, but the flowers were silver, which she thought suited Byakuya more than gold would. More importantly than that, though, what bloomed bright across the surface were camellias, the Sixth’s symbol. And the Sixth had been in the Kuchiki family for generations, she knew that much. Carefully, she took the pen in-hand, then moved slightly down the line to look at the tips—nibs, Ishida had called them. Choosing a silver one to match, but keeping it simple so it wouldn’t compete with the design on the pen itself, she glanced up to find Ishida carefully contemplating what looked to be several different internal parts, his mouth downturned and his eyes narrowed behind his glasses. 

With a dissatisfied sound, he put one part back down and picked up another of the same type, his eyes lighting with something as he tested the weight of it. He turned to face her, holding up the part, which had a shape similar to the outside of the pen, but thinner, and ribbed, almost like it was a skeletal version of the same. “I found you a feed,” he said, eyes falling to what she had in her hands. “Looks like we only need some ink.”

Apparently, this ink was different from the kind one might use with a brush, and they spent a while bickering over colors before at last selecting a rich blue-black. The resulting purchase punched a hole in her funds—Tessai had converted her currency to yen for her that morning—but she felt strangely optimistic about it, and insisted on carrying this particular bag herself.

* * *

She’d just concluded her shopping with the purchase of something called a ‘cell phone charm’ for her denreishinki, in the shape of a rabbit, when Ishida stiffened abruptly beside her. It took her half a second more to understand why, and she hastily stuffed her last purchase in her bag, ignoring the beeping from the device in her pocket. She didn’t need it to tell her where she was headed. 

“Let’s go.” He nodded, and they both took off, running for the mall’s front entrance. Ishida dropped everything but the thick poster tube he carried over one shoulder, and she set all her things down beside them, hidden from view and out of the way. He set the end of the tube on the ground and pulled off the top, tilting it towards her. Reaching in, she grasped Sode no Shirayuki’s hilt and withdrew her, gripping the zanpakutō just beneath the tsuba and breaking into a sprint after Ishida, who’d already started running again. 

Fortunately, they had some time to get where they needed to be. The garganta opened just above the parking lot, which was mostly empty; everyone who had left their cars there was inside. Of course, that posed an additional problem. If even one Hollow made it to that mall, all the souls inside at such close proximity would be easy picking. They had to stop it before it got that far. 

The Hollow that emerged from the gate into Hueco Mundo was quite large, though beyond that, not especially extraordinary in appearance. Like many of them, it was a quadruped, its mask shaped basically like an inverted triangle, point-down. Upon spotting the both of them headed towards it, it opened its mouth and let out a bellow, the sonorous note grating on her ears. 

Rukia glanced to her side, where Ishida had moved in so they were running no more than a foot apart, both headed right for the Hollow, which landed on several cars with a grinding crunch, glass shattering in all directions. The few humans remaining in the lot all gaped at what seemed a spontaneous moment of destruction, the act of a god or freak accident. She noted their faces, knowing that memory modification would almost surely be necessary by the time they were done. 

“Launch me,” she said grimly, and Ishida nodded, holding out an arm, his palm facing back towards her. Rukia lunged, wrapping her fingers just beneath his elbow, and felt his own close over her in just about the same spot. He stopped, she jumped, and almost immediately, felt the world reverse direction, as she was spun around to gather momentum. Then, with a bust of reiryoku, she was propelled forward, their grips releasing at the same time and flinging her like a bullet from a sling. She slid Sode no Shirayuki free of her sheath as she flew in a controlled arc towards the Hollow. 

Ishida’s aim was impeccable as always, and she crashed into the Hollow sword-first, the blade of her zanpakutō slicing deep into the pearly mask and shattering it. 

Releasing her breath, she landed on the ground, rolling her shoulders, only for Ishida’s shout to draw her attention upwards. From the garganta spilled dozens more Hollows, crushing cars and concrete beneath them in a cacophony of fractures and grinding noises. 

_So many…_

“Ishida! The glove!” He was at her side before she’d even finished speaking, pulling on the Gokon Tekkō. He reached out, smacking her on the shoulder with his palm, and Rukia felt the strange sensation of cut strings as her spirit body was parted from her gigai. It almost hurt, and she wondered, not for the first time, if she weren’t becoming too attuned to it. 

There was little time to think about that, though, and she nodded to Ishida, who picked up her gigai and lay it over his shoulder. It probably shouldn’t be kept in the parking lot, and he’d be able to get it away and return quickly, leaving her to fend off the Hollows in the meantime. 

Nervous sweat gathered at her brow, but Rukia pushed down her doubt, focusing instead on the task immediately in front of her. The nearest Hollow leaped towards her, bounding in great strides, but it was too slow, and she jumped aside, slashing at it on its way past. It disintegrated with a burst of light, and she shifted her grip on Sode no Shirayuki. In an ordinary situation, she’d have already started using kidō, but given her depleted reiryoku, she knew she had a few weak spells in her, at best, and she needed to save those for strategic use, not burn through them just to thin numbers. 

Fortunately, low-level Hollows were fairly predictable, and she ducked under a swing from the next, a simian creature with long arms and short legs, and jumped, propelling herself far enough into the air that she could stab, and her zanpakutō bit into the center of the mask. Gravity took over from there, and on her way down, Rukia dragged the katana through the mask’s lower half, splintering it until it broke apart, destroying the Hollow. 

A faint pulse from Sode no Shirayuki in her mind was the only warning she had that the next two were incoming, and Rukia jumped back just in time. From behind her, she heard a crash, and whipped around to see Ishida throw one back with a burst of reiatsu. He’d made it clear to her that he could not kill Hollows and therefore preferred to let her be the one to deal the last blow. So she moved in, letting him turn to take on the two that had gone for her, and finishing off the stunned one on the ground. 

If he’d been a shinigami, she would have said he fought mostly with reiryoku-reinforced _hakuda_ —she’d never seen him use a weapon of any kind, but his attacks were just as strong as anyone she trained with, and his control and precision were better than most. Rukia couldn’t say for sure, but she thought his reiryoku might even be hovering near fifth or sixth class, but he kept a tight lid on it most of the time, so it was hard to pinpoint. 

In any case, they were more than a match, on an individual basis, for such low-level Hollows as these. Rukia’s depleted powers were a significant hindrance, but not one that teamwork could not overcome. And in turn, her knowledge and experience in fighting Hollows supplemented Ishida’s relatively narrow frames of reference for strategy. 

Pulling in a breath, Rukia bent her knees and launched herself back into the fray, Ishida just behind.

* * *

Sweat ran between her shoulderblades, dampening the back of her shihakusho, and Rukia flexed her grip on the white hilt of her zanpakutō. That had been the last of them, but… the garganta was still open. She knew it took a more powerful Hollow than any of these had been to open such a gate between worlds, so why—

A sudden flood of reiatsu hit her like a wall, and Rukia fell to her knees, unable to push back against it with her own trickle of reiryoku. Bile rose in her throat, and she braced Sode no Shirayuki on the ground, leaning heavily on the sword for support as she tried to stand. 

The pressure abated more suddenly than she would have expected, and Rukia overcompensated, springing up with enough force to overbalance her, at least until she knocked into Ishida’s shoulder. She frowned at him, a gesture he mirrored, but with a different edge, his reflecting only confusion. 

“That reiatsu…” she said, and he nodded.

“It is much greater than the others.”

She narrowed her eyes at him, wondering if he was really oblivious to what she actually meant or simply being obtuse. Did he know that he was lifting the spiritual pressure within a radius of his person or was it simply an instinct? That seemed wrong—Ishida was intellectual, not instinctive. But she read no hint of deception on his face. 

There were more important things to deal with, however—like the garganta. Rukia’s eyes flickered up towards it, and rounded. She pulled in a sharp breath, nearly stumbling backwards a step. “Menos,” she murmured, her tone breathy. 

For that was the only thing it could be, the size it was. The garganta expanded, like a black crack in the sky, and slowly the Menos Grande emerged, its mask in the characteristic oblong shape with the pointed nose. A slight clatter pulled her attention back downwards for a mere moment, and she realized it was her katana, making the sound because Rukia’s hands were shaking. Her heart was in her throat, and she swore she could hear her blood rushing in her ears. 

“—Rukia-san!” It must not have been Ishida’s first attempt to draw her attention, because he paired it with a sharp nudge. Rukia shook her head, clearing away the fog that had descended over it, and met his eyes. “What is that?”

“A Menos Grande, or Gillian,” she replied, almost automatically. “It’s… it’s what happens when Hollows eat each other, and it’s much more powerful than an ordinary Hollow. I’ve… I’ve only ever seen them in textbooks.” Such a creature was likely beyond her ability to defeat, even _with_ her full capabilities available to her. Now… she swallowed thickly. Now their deaths were only a matter of the time it took for the creature to fully emerge, unless they ran. 

She could not—would not. “Ishida, you should get out of here,” she said, tightening her grip on the hilt of her sword in an effort to still the trembling there. 

He looked down his nose at her. “Don’t be ridiculous.”

“I’m serious!” she insisted. “This isn’t some normal Hollow! You can’t just hit it hard enough with your hands and a little energy and hope it dies!”

“Then I won’t.” A flash of red alerted Rukia to the fact that the Menos was preparing an attack, and she felt her argument die in her throat. This was no time to be debating it. If he was going to stay, she didn’t have the ability to force him away, and that was the simple truth of the matter. 

The Gillian’s spiritual pressure spiked, and the red energy gathering near the mouth of its mask flared, descending upon them with unbelievable speed. Rukia raised Sode no Shirayuki in an attempted block, prepared to die trying to kill this creature, and heard a scoff from behind her. 

“Fool.” Something slammed into her with enough force to knock the breath out of her in a single gust, and the cero hit the ground where she’d been standing not a moment before. Disoriented, it took Rukia a moment to figure out where she was—the spatial displacement was wrong for the amount of time it had been, but somehow she was outside the massive radius of the cero. The arm around her waist loosened, and Ishida stepped out to her left, glaring down at her with more heat than she’d seen since the day after they met.

“If you’re going to die, make it mean something,” he groused, shifting his eyes up to the Menos Grande. Sunlight flared off his lenses, making it impossible to tell what, if anything, he felt by looking at the creature, but it was slowly turning towards them, and his mouth dropped into a scowl. 

“Stay here. You’ll have to be the one to deal the last blow, so you need to survive until then.” She opened her mouth to protest, but he was already gone, disappearing from her senses for a moment before reappearing at a far angle. Outside the range of his reiatsu, she felt the pressure from the Gillian’s again, but braced herself on the car he’d set her down behind, able to keep her feet this time. She could feel her own seeping back in, slowly, but at a greater rate than she would have thought. 

Rukia’s eyes tracked Ishida as he advanced towards the Menos, moving far too quickly for it to target adequately. She felt a shift in the air, almost as though the latent reishi in the atmosphere were… quivering, then stabilizing to vibrate at a low hum she could taste at the back of her tongue. The sensation made no more sense than the thought, but if she had to compare it to anything, she would say… it was like that period of time before a thunderstorm, when the lightning that was to come was almost palpable, a smell on the breeze. 

Her tongue darted out to wet her lower lip, and she flexed the hand not holding her zanpakutō. As the reishi became denser, she felt her own reiryoku stirring. The way it was gathering, the area immediately around her felt a little more like being in Soul Society, so perhaps it was affecting her healing in the same way, but… faster. 

Rukia’s eyes narrowed, sweeping over the area, trying to fix the source of the disturbance. Was this some ability of Menos that she’d never heard of? Her glance went to the Gillian, moving as if underwater to raise one of its giant arms from under the cloaklike construction enveloping its body. She felt a distinct sense of wrongness, though.

 _No. Him._

For the first time in over a month, Rukia heard Sode no Shirayuki’s voice in her mind, though it was a barely-discernible murmur. Drawing her brows together, she moved her eyes down. 

_Him? …Ishida?_

There was a brief burst of confirmation, and then Sode no Shirayuki’s presence faded from her mind again. Rukia moved around the vehicle, ducking into a crouch and maneuvering around to the driver’s side door, where she peered out from over the mirror, spotting Ishida, who continued to advance on the Hollow, this time vertically. Little flashes illuminated at his feet as reishi particles solidified into small, circular platforms for him to jump from, and at his right hand gathered many more, forming into a bright blue orb before he gave them shape. 

Rukia sucked in a breath when he did. There was a strange, weblike pattern in the middle, but the vertical axis was almost as long as Ishida was tall, and with his left hand, he drew back a thin blue reishi string, an arrow forming with the effortless motion. This, too, she had seen in textbooks, but never in person. 

“Quincy,” she breathed, swamped with a tide of emotions she could not quite differentiate. Among them, she knew, were both anger and even a touch of fear, but above all, she felt… dismay? It was the only thing that could explain the sudden heaviness of her limbs and the tight knot in her chest, neither the result of the Menos Grande’s reiatsu. 

Rukia knew only a little of the Quincy, but that little didn’t do anything to reassure her. Every shinigami in Shin’ō Academy was taught that the Quincy were strange, spiritually-aware humans who could destroy soul-beings completely, removing them from the cycle of rebirth, an ability they had frequently used on Hollows, enough that the balance of souls between the living world and Soul Society had been in serious danger. Though none but the strongest Quincy truly posed a threat to high-level shinigami, they could very well have destroyed the universe in such a way.

And so, two hundred years ago, the Sōtaicho had given the order for their extermination. The war was bloody, but short, and in the end, few Quincy remained. That she had actually met one of them… suddenly Ishida’s initial antagonism towards her made more sense. She was a shinigami, one of those responsible for nearly wiping out his people, however justified they’d been. 

The arrow in Ishida’s bow swelled in size, and then he released it. The Menos shot another red cero at the same time, and Rukia’s eyes went wide as the two collided. The arrow looked to shatter, and she felt her heart in her throat, knowing that Ishida would surely be consumed by such an attack as that if it hit him directly. 

But with a fulmination of blue light, the cero dispersed, cut into a thousand places by blue arrows, many of which disintegrated, spent in the effort to neutralize the blast. Those that remained flew true, striking the Menos’s body with flares followed by plumes of smoke, burning on contact. 

It reached its hand for Ishida, who vanished and reappeared, too far away for its grip to close around anything but empty air. Raising his bow again, he formed another arrow, aiming for the offending limb. This time, the arrow split immediately, flying like needles compared to the Gillian’s giant arm. 

But if they were needles, they pierced true, and each exploded on contact, leaving the appendage sooty and useless. Ishida flashed away again, firing more and more arrows into the Menos, which was by now focused entirely upon him. It was simply too slow to catch him, however, and though no one of Ishida’s projectiles was enough to lay it low, the sheer number of them was slowly depleting it, and he hadn’t yet aimed for anywhere near its head. 

_You’ll have to be the one to deal the last blow_. 

She understood now, the real rationale behind that decision, one he had made every time they came up against a Hollow, of any kind. It wasn’t that he _couldn’t_ kill them, it was that such a blow would spell a true end to the soul that still lurked at the core of any Hollow. An end to something that had once been human. 

If ever he broke a Hollow’s mask with his powers, he would be committing a murder. 

Rukia shored her hold on her zanpakutō, stepping out from behind the vehicle she sheltered under, unsure exactly what her course of action should be. In any case, she needed to get closer. Fighting back the spiritual pressure of the Menos, she sprinted towards the confrontation. 

But the Gillian was already retreating, pulling back into the garganta from which it had emerged. She watched as Ishida recognized this, and watched him pull back his bow again, another arrow appearing, notched and ready to fire. The moment seemed almost to freeze in time, and she wondered, for a split second, if she was about to witness the obliteration of a soul. Could he? _Would_ he? A shout rose in the back of her throat, but just before it could pass her lips, Ishida lowered the bow, dismissing it in wisps of blue energy, and descended slowly to the ground. 

When he landed, his legs gave out from underneath him, and he fell to his knees on the asphalt of the parking lot, then, as if in slow-motion, into a sprawl on his back, arms outstretched. His left hand bled freely, blood pooling on the ground beneath him, but if he noticed, he didn’t react. 

In fact, he didn’t move at all, not until he heard her approach. Even then, he only angled his head weakly, meeting her eyes with his own, upside down since she was technically standing behind him. He released a heavy breath. 

Her emotions must have been written on her face, because he let his eyes fall closed a moment, and it looked like defeat, or at least resignation. 

“You’re a Quincy,” she said, and despite all her effort to make it sound accusatory, it only succeeded in coming out flatly. 

“What else would I be?” he asked by way of reply, cracking his eyes open again, his voice just as toneless as hers was, probably from exhaustion. 

Rukia supposed it was a fair point. Spiritually-aware humans were rarely strong enough to manifest any powers, and the Quincy were the only documented cases of humans even _approaching_ shinigami in terms of capability. And then there was that pentacle he wore, glinting even now at his wrist, and the cross motif of his uniforms. 

She suppressed a bitter smile—he’d even sewn one into her dress, and she’d thought it looked lovely. 

In retrospect, it should have been obvious, especially after a month of clues. Was she really so oblivious? 

But no one expected to meet their night-terrors in the flesh. Perhaps she simply had not _wanted_ to see.

His eyes closed once more, and the reishi in the air diffused as he lost consciousness.

* * *

She sat in the hallway outside her—his? She didn’t really know—room, staring down at the screen of her denreishinki. There was an open message, addressed to her superiors, ready for text input. All she had to do was report that she’d discovered the location of a living Quincy, and a surveillance team from the Onmitsukidō would be in Karakura within hours, if not sooner. Rukia didn’t know exactly how long it had been since anyone had been able to confirm a Quincy’s existence, but she would be able to. Probably even two, considering he’d mentioned that his father was still alive, and he was likely a Quincy too, even if he didn’t actively use his powers. 

They might even excuse her lack of an earlier return, if she told them she’d been chasing down a lead on such a thing. It was the kind of action that not only she _should_ undertake, as part of her duty to the Gotei 13, but that would probably earn her a promotion as well. Maybe even an officer’s seat, a way to satisfy her adoptive family, to meet their expectations of her. Perhaps her brother would glance her way even once. 

But somehow, she was having difficulty finding the words. 

“You sure you want to do that?”

Rukia jumped in her seated position, head snapping up, to find Urahara standing on the opposite side of the hallway, Yoruichi balanced easily atop his hat. He crossed his arms over his chest and slid down the wall, so that he was sitting directly across from her, his head slightly canted to the right. He always seemed to be tilted somehow, from his posture to his smiles—like he could never do anything at straightforward, square angles.

“The Central 46 have mandated that—”

He waved a hand lazily. “Not what I asked, Rukia-chan. I asked if _you_ were sure that _you_ wanted to do it.” In the dim light of the hallway, his eyes reflected eerily, the bright argent sharp like the edge of a zanpakutō. She couldn’t hold them for long, and looked back down at her communication device. 

“I fail to see how my personal inclinations play any role in this decision at all.”

He grinned, and it was jagged. “Of course you do.”

Yoruichi slunk down to his shoulder, readjusting herself so that she was draped over it like an ermine stole, little more than a pair of slitted yellow eyes in the dark. “What about _his_ inclinations?” she asked, in that jarringly-masculine voice of hers. 

Rukia gritted her teeth, forcing the words out. “They matter just as little. The law of Soul Society is that any Quincy discovered must be reported to the Twelfth and the First.”

“Why?” Yoruichi pressed, her eyes disappearing and reappearing again as she blinked slowly. 

_The Quincy are a tribe of human beings with the power to utterly destroy souls. This power is most often used to annihilate Hollows, but as Hollows are not fundamentally different from other souls, and subject to the same restrictions and purification processes, it can be inferred that destruction at the hands of a Quincy can likewise destroy any other soul, at least in principle. The danger of these beings cannot be underestimated, and any shinigami who encounters one is urged to proceed only with utmost caution, and to report the sighting at once to their superior officers._

“Because… because Quincy destroy souls.” She couldn’t believe this needed explaining. Did Yoruichi really not know?

“They can,” Urahara said mildly, shrugging his shoulders. “If they’re strong enough, at least.” He still wore the ragged smile, narrow eyes like flecks of flint. 

“Have you ever seen him do it?”

Rukia’s lips parted, her mouth dry. Of course she hadn’t. Ishida had never used those powers in front of her, probably to keep himself from being turned in. Just today, though, he’d… 

_What?_

Sode no Shirayuki spoke into her mind, her query pointed. _What did he do today? He used a tool, for a purpose. His instruments are sharp, but so is a zanpakutō. What it is used for is not decided by the power, but the wielder._

Ishida had lowered his bow. 

Ishida had saved her when she thought she was about to die. 

Ishida had stayed to fight when he could have run, could have kept his identity concealed from her as long as she remained here. 

Ishida had answered her questions about himself and his world without frustration or impatience. 

But Ishida hated shinigami. She knew he did—he made no secret of it. He was dangerous already, strong enough that even if he continued to contain his reiatsu, he would one day throw off the balance of it in the area, and continue to attract Hollows. It was her duty to report his existence, so that the Seireitei could monitor him for future threat. 

“I can’t make those decisions,” she said. “I don’t know enough—I have to believe in the Gotei 13. In my superiors, who can see further than I can.” It was her duty. That was why personal inclination didn’t make a difference. “Even if Ishida is the exception that proves the rule, the rule is still proven, and I don’t have the latitude to make the exceptions.”

“Hm,” said Urahara, his smile fading for a moment. “Good thing _we_ do, then.”

She was about to ask what he meant when she felt a breeze pass her by, and suddenly her hand was empty, the denreishinki in Yoruichi’s mouth. The cat swished her tail in a lashing motion. “—hey!”

“Glad we could come to an agreement, Rukia-chan,” continued Urahara, as though nothing unusual had occurred. He stood, casually brushing off his knees, and she gritted her teeth. 

Rukia rose as well, taking Sode no Shirayuki with her, thumbing the zanpakutō loose in her sheath. She wasn’t sure exactly what she was going to do, but she couldn’t let them just—

Before she could so much as blink, Urahara was directly in front of her, a single finger forcing the katana back into its sheath with more strength than she would have thought possible. For once, the shopkeeper’s eyes contained not the faintest hint of mirth. “You seem to have a good instinct for when you’re in over your head, Rukia-chan,” he said quietly. “I think you should put it to use now.” 

He smiled again, but his eyes remained dark. “Ishida-kun may be a threat in the eyes of Central 46, and you aren’t wrong to fear him. But he’s one of my valued employees, you see. It’s very hard to find good help these days, you know, and I’d prefer to keep him.” Just as abruptly as he’d appeared in front of her, he moved several feet away again, glancing down to Yoruichi, who still held Rukia’s denreishinki.

“We’ll just keep this for a little while, I think. No harm done.”

And then they were both gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Term Dictionary_ :
> 
>  _Hakuda_  – 白打– Literally "white hits." It's the style of hand-to-hand combat shinigami are trained in. Uryū learned his from Urahara, and uses it in situations where he has reason not to use his bow.
> 
>  _Maki-e_ – 蒔絵 – Literally “sprinkled picture.” This is a lacquer technique. The lacquer itself is sprinkled with gold or silver powder as a decoration. The technique mostly developed in the Edo period (1603-1868), and was initially used to create fancy stuff for nobility. Eventually, they became symbolic of prestige and wealth, which explains why both Uryū and Rukia think something thus created would probably suit a fancypants like Byakuya.
> 
> * * *
> 
> So... that happened. The fallout from this particular discovery isn't done, mostly since Uryū is currently out like a light. I'm handling who knows what information about Quincy a little differently from canon, extrapolating some things from what is known about Quincy abilities, and carrying some other things out to their logical conclusion. So, in this story, Quincy can obliterate any soul being when they kill it, including shinigami, but only if they're strong enough. Obviously, most human Quincy wouldn't worry a captain or whatever, but the potential is there, and thus the Quincy are kind of like bogeymen of sorts, particularly among shinigami recruits (who feasibly _could_ be threatened by them). Should also make certain later plot events properly terrifying, no? The threat of death is a little blunted if you're always just going to reincarnate anyway, I think.
> 
> I should say that I've been really honored/flattered by the response to this story so far. It makes my day reading and responding to your comments, and I really enjoy learning what you all think is going to happen, or why you believe certain things occurred as they did. It also keeps me honest when it comes to really thinking through everyone's reasons for acting the way they do, which helps shape the story to a finer point, I think.


	5. Dissolve

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dissolve: _transitive verb_ , \di-ˈzälv, -ˈzȯlv also -ˈzäv or -ˈzȯv\
> 
> 1\. to cause to disperse or disappear  
> 2\. to separate into component parts  
> 3\. to cause to be emotionally moved

“How is it feeling?” Tsukabishi indicated Uryū’s left hand with his chin, while he rummaged in the first aid kit for the rest of the bandages. They were going through those at an alarming rate, lately. 

Uryū closed his fingers over his palm—there was a little spot of dark red on the bandage there where some blood had leaked through the dressings Tsukabishi had applied to the wound. “Stiff,” he replied. 

The other man grunted softly, gesturing for Uryū to pass his hand over, which he did. Tsukabishi loosened and unwound the bandages, carefully pulling away the padding. Prickles of pain sparked where the gauze took dried blood with it, but Uryū kept his lips pressed together. The wound was scabbing, and would likely be gone entirely within a few days. 

Tsukabishi swabbed it with antiseptic and redid the bandages, but it didn’t take so much of his attention that he could not speak. “She hasn’t reported you,” he said. Uryū didn’t need to ask what he was talking about. His eyelids fell halfway, weighted down, and he shook his head. Somehow, knowing that produced no feeling of relief. He couldn’t pinpoint the cause of his reaction, but perhaps it didn’t matter. 

“I’ll be found eventually,” he replied, flexing his hand again once the new bandage was in place. “I’ve always known that.” If he continued on his path, he would eventually fail at concealing himself properly, and his reiatsu would affect the external environment in a way no shinigami could miss. He’d accepted that. _Wanted_ it, even. 

“But not before you are ready,” Tsukabishi replied, and the firmness in his tone drew Uryū’s eyes to him. He blinked, tilting his head to the side, and a small smile twitched beneath Tsukabishi’s mustache. “We know what you want, Ishida-kun,” he explained. “But it would be a waste, if you got their attention before you were prepared for the consequences.”

His pride stung a little, but Uryū was smart enough to know that Tsukabishi was implying something true—he wasn’t yet prepared for all of Soul Society to know about him. Particularly not when he wasn’t sure exactly how they would react. He dipped his chin. “Thanks for the bandages, Tsukabishi-san.”

“Not at all,” said the big man, replacing the extra supplies in the medical kit and standing. He was at the door before he turned around halfway, knocking the side of his thumb against the frame a few times and frowning at it. “You know… you might consider speaking with her. It seems you two don’t really understand each other quite yet. I think you might be surprised if you did.” His tone lacked admonishment or command, but it was quiet and steady, with no hint of artifice, characteristic of his few words. 

Uryū frowned, remaining silent as Tsukabishi left the room, then sighed and turned his eyes toward the window. Rain, again. 

Of course.

* * *

As it turned out, even if he’d wanted to take Tsukabishi’s advice, she would have made it difficult. He sensed her presence around the shop usually only at night and early in the morning—she’d started leaving for school before he did, and returning beforehand, only to disappear somewhere when he made it back from meetings of the handicrafts club. They made their patrols at the same time, but separately, and he supposed it was fortunate that there hadn’t been many other Hollows since the Menos incident. 

When there were, he remained at a distance, close enough to intervene if necessary but far enough that they didn’t have to speak or cooperate in any way. He still prepared an extra lunch every day, and still had the extra dishes to do every evening when he went to pack them again, but for two people who lived in the same house, he and Rukia had become extremely good at avoiding each other. 

He essentially lived the same life he’d had about a month ago, and it didn’t feel the same at all. 

Ending his last sentence with a decisive period, Uryū released a ponderous breath through his nose, reaching up to remove his glasses and rub the bridge of his nose between his thumb and first two fingers. He could feel a little headache building right there, like a pressure he couldn’t quite alleviate. 

The motions of his hand paused, however, when he sensed the approach of her reiatsu. He was sitting behind the counter as usual for the afternoon, and a quick glance at his watch informed him that it was nearly sunset. She didn’t usually reappear for another couple of hours yet. For an absurd moment, he considered retreating upstairs, to the room he currently shared with Jinta and Ururu, but he stopped himself before he’d made it any further than bracing his feet against the stool’s crossbar. This was ridiculous; he wasn’t going to flee from her approach like a frightened rabbit. He wasn’t afraid. 

So Uryū replaced his glasses on his face and decided to read back over his essay for errors. He’d only made it to the third sentence when the front door slid open, and despite himself, he glanced up. Rukia shook excess precipitation from her umbrella and placed it in the stand, removing her shoes and placing them next to his at the end of the line. 

When she straightened, their eyes met, and Uryū looked away at the same moment she did, returning his eyes to his paper. 

Soft footsteps followed, as she presumably retreated to her room, or wherever. 

“I’ve been thinking.” Uryū’s head whipped up so fast he almost strained his neck, eyebrows both ascending his forehead. There was no one in the room but him, besides her—he didn’t have to look around to confirm that. Which meant…

“About a lot of things.” She was talking to him, and looking right at him when she did. Carefully, he closed over the notebook containing his essay, his hands falling to his knees. 

He frowned just fractionally. “…such as?”

Rukia inhaled deeply, the motion raising her shoulders, which she pulled back to straighten her posture. “You… I was… angry, that you didn’t tell me you were a Quincy.” Her toes curled in her socks against the tatami flooring of the shop; at a guess, she was trying not to shift too much. “And I was… upset, that you are, because… because everything I’ve ever learned about people like you tells me that you’re dangerous, and reckless, and arrogant almost beyond comprehension.”

Uryū bit down hard on the inside of his mouth to stop what would follow if he allowed himself to open it. He felt no few of his muscles tighten, almost as though he were readying himself for a confrontation—the reaction to those words, from a shinigami, was simply visceral. He hoped she wasn’t done talking.

“And there’s still a lot I don’t understand about you. Even more than I thought.” The last came out a bit wry, and the enforced neutrality of her expression eased for only a moment. He pushed out a sharp huff. “You have to understand… we learn in the Academy what you do, how you can destroy a soul, well after we’ve all learned how important the balance is, how dangerous it can be if left unregulated.” She shook her head faintly. 

“When recruits get drunk and tell each other horror stories, most of the time, they’re about Hollows. But the scariest ones are about Quincy—about strong ones like you.” Her throat worked as she swallowed thickly, her fingers twitching at her side. 

Uryū’s hands curled into fists under the table, his healed hand twinging only slightly. That was a strange piece of knowledge. Shinigami _feared_ Quincy? At least some of them did. He couldn’t quite decide how that made him feel. Part of him definitely wanted them to, of course, but—not for such a reason as that. Not for the existential threat; that idea repulsed him, somewhere deep in his guts. He grimaced.

“So I’m a villain to you, then.” Uryū shut his eyes, the irony of it pressing down on him like gravity multiplied. He felt rooted to the spot, stuck somehow. 

When the world reappeared in his vision, the first thing he saw was Rukia shaking her head. “That’s just the problem,” she admitted softly. “You aren’t. Not you. Not to me.” 

A pained expression flitted over her face, not so unlike the one she’d worn under the Gillian’s reiatsu. “I’m supposed to report you. I almost did. I probably would have, if Urahara-san and Yoruichi-san hadn’t stopped me. But I didn’t want to.” She nearly choked on the word, it seemed, and Uryū’s brows knit. 

In some way, he supposed that should have been the final nail in the coffin of whatever rapport they’d managed to gain. She’d have turned him in, if others hadn’t stopped her. It should have been simple, straightforward, obvious— _over_. 

But it wasn’t. 

“I almost didn’t help you, that first night. I almost left you to fight the Hollows alone, and then I almost left you to die from whatever the poison would have done to you.” He grit his teeth for a moment, then eased the pressure on his jaw. “Everything I’ve ever learned about people like you tells me that you’re callous, unfeeling, and too wrapped up in mindless obedience to understand that your certainty in your own correctness is an arrogance all its own.” 

“Huh.” She let the word out with a breath, lips compressed into a straight line. “But not… you’re not angry because of the war?”

He blinked at her. Uryū supposed he could understand why she would think that—it was her only frame of reference for interaction between shinigami and Quincy. Her words, her attitude, had made that clear enough to him. Slowly, he shook his head, pausing to adjust his glasses. 

“Actually, as far as that goes, I understand the shinigami position. I may even agree with it.” Whether mass genocide was the appropriate _response_ for the disagreement was a different matter entirely, but he’d never blamed her for _that_. 

Rukia took half a step forward. “Then why…?”

Uryū’s gaze fell to the counter, and he considered it. He wasn’t obligated to explain himself to her. He owed her nothing. But… “Do you remember when I told you that all the family I cared about was dead?” 

“…yes.”

He stared hard at a whorl in the counter’s wood grain, tracing it listlessly with his eyes. “My grandfather was under surveillance, most of the time. There were only a few places he could go away from the group of shinigami that followed him.” Which was the only reason Uryū himself wasn’t constantly followed in the same way—his training, elementary as it was, had been a matter of the utmost secrecy. 

“He wasn’t in one of those places when he was ambushed by Hollows. He’d spent his entire life advocating for peace and cooperation between the Quincy who were left and the shinigami. And when they could have stepped in to save him… they didn’t.” Uryū looked back up, and Rukia flinched visibly, until he remembered himself and softened his scowl. 

“He was their ally. Maybe their only one, in all of those who were left. And they didn’t lift a single finger to save his life. But when he was dead, _then_ they whisked him away, so that I couldn’t even…” He squeezed his eyes shut, feeling himself tremble with the beginnings of that terrible rage this memory invoked in him. “I couldn’t even burn him properly.” They’d left nothing for cremation.

“You saw.” Her tone was curiously empty, and he nodded. 

“How old were you?”

He sighed, some of the tension leaving his frame as slowly, the anger began to ebb. “Ten.”

Uryū heard a breath hiss out from between Rukia’s teeth. “I’m—”

He looked up sharply, cutting her off. “ _Don’t_ apologize for that,” he snapped, voice low, “unless you can mean it. Because the truth is, those shinigami, the ones who were supposed to be watching him, they were taking orders from above, just like all of you do. And they would never apologize for what they did. Unless you think you’re really different from them, unless you’re willing to admit that those above you were wrong, and that following them can be wrong, don’t you _dare_ apologize to me.”

For a long moment, they held one another’s eyes, his fierce and hers wide, and then she glanced away, shoulders slumping. She didn’t try to insist, or to modify her apology into some kind of meaningless platitude, and in the end, Uryū released a long, slow breath, tipping his head back to look at the ceiling. 

“You’re different,” he muttered, “but you’re also not different at all.”

“I could say the same about you,” she replied softly, and he nodded readily. 

“I don’t hate you, though,” Uryū continued, tracing his thumb over the nearly invisible scar on his left palm, the back of his hand still on his knee. 

“I don’t hate you, either,” she agreed. 

“Patrol tonight?”

“…yeah. Sure.”

He was still staring at the ceiling when her footsteps receded up the stairs.

* * *

One week after that discussion, Uryū felt as though things had reached some sort of equilibrium again. There was a distinct edge of awkwardness that remained still, perhaps symptomatic of the elephant in the room, one they had mutually acknowledged and were just as mutually choosing to ignore, for now. He’d almost surprised himself with his own willingness to do so, but he didn’t regret the choice. 

They took the night’s patrol relatively slowly, both of them possessing senses more than adequate to detect any Hollows long before they drew close enough for an ambush of any kind. Urahara had given back Rukia’s communication device as well, except that the only part of it that worked now was the radar. 

He didn’t ask how she knew that.

For once, they both conducted the patrol in plainclothes—Rukia had pointed out a while ago that the uniform was conspicuous at best, and while Uryū maintained that it was more practical, due to being durable enough to last through a fight, he had at least conceded that ordinary patrols, in populated areas where they might be seen, perhaps called for something less… obvious. Not that he was terribly happy about it. 

They didn’t speak, but the silence was comfortable enough. He was about to suggest that they head south when a sharp spike in reiatsu registered to his senses. Two people—no, two shinigami—not three blocks from their current location. 

“Senkaimon,” Rukia said, answering his question before he’d even asked it. There was no way they’d both have failed to notice two appearances like that _miles_ out, let alone meters.

Almost as soon as the two had appeared, the reiatsu signatures began to move. It would seem the recognition had been mutual. Uryū scowled deeply, his eyes flicking to Rukia, who shook her head. He thought to ask if these were people she knew when the signatures disappeared, then reappeared right on top of them. “Behind you!”

Rukia pitched herself forward without hesitation, rolling and finding her feet again, drawing her zanpakutō from the poster tube while Uryū intercepted the next blow with a reishi shield braced over his crossed arms. 

The shinigami’s strike landed heavily, a saw-toothed blade wrenching back like a bread knife. Each tooth ground against the surface of Uryū’s reishi, and the shield flashed, cracking down the middle. Uryū leaped back, just as a slight rasp alerted him to the fact that Rukia had drawn her blade. The difference in reiatsu between Rukia and her attacker was great, but the bigger threat still was the other one. 

Uryū stood at her shoulder, shaking out his arm. He wasn’t sure how he’d fare himself, if this one kept attacking, but Rukia’s hand on the crook of his elbow held him back from the attempt. She shook her head subtly. He felt his lip curl, but he stayed put. 

“Hn. When they said you were in a gigai like this, cavorting around with a bunch of humans, I didn’t believe them at first. But I guess they were right after all.” The speaker was their assailant, and Uryū knew without further confirmation that whoever the man was, he knew Rukia personally. No one sounded that bitter about something like this unless it was personal. 

“Renji…” Rukia met his eyes, and then they shifted to the other man, rounding slightly. Uryū was close enough to hear her take in a short breath. “Kuchiki-taicho.”

 _Kuchiki_? Uryū’s eyes narrowed, swinging from the man with red hair and tattoos to the other. The other Kuchiki’s bearing was upright, rigidly so, and he observed the scene with absolutely no emotion visible on his face whatsoever. Rukia had been right about one thing, though—he didn’t look at her, his eyes resting momentarily on Uryū himself before settling somewhere over his shoulder, almost in the middle distance. 

Uryū felt his ire rising again, a slow, volcanic build he couldn’t quite explain. 

“Rukia Kuchiki of the Thirteenth Division,” the one called Renji said, adjusting his stance to get low, his strange blade in front of him. “You’re under arrest, for insubordination against the Soul Society, and failure to report when summoned. Desertion is a serious sin, you know.” His tattoos made the heavy indent in his brow seem more menacing, and Uryū somehow knew he didn’t want to hear what the penalty was for desertion in Soul Society. 

He took a step forward, gathering the reishi in his right hand to form Ginrei Kojaku. Ready or not, there was simply no choice here. 

“Ishida!” Rukia’s voice was sharp, and he stopped short, halfway through his second step towards Renji. “Don’t interfere.” 

“What?” He glanced back at her over his shoulder, and saw that her eyes were wide. She shook her head again. 

“You can’t intervene. You’re _just_ a human, you understand? Shinigami business is none of yours.” Her free hand curled into a fist at her side, the other maintaining a white-knuckled grip on her zanpakutō. 

Uryū understood immediately what she was trying to do. 

“That’s not important right now, Rukia-san,” he ground out, unsure if he meant it. The reishi at his fingertips dispersed, though, and she smiled slightly. 

“Of course it is,” she replied softly, taking several steps forward and towards the two men. The redhead looked like he’d swallowed something sour, but the other was looking at him again, more keenly this time, his hand resting at the hilt of his zanpakutō. Uryū stiffened. Had he guessed, perhaps? 

“You’re giving up? How disappointing.” It was unclear whether the man named Renji was speaking more to Rukia or to Uryū himself, but either way, he bristled at the implications. 

“Ishida.” His eyes flicked to her. “ _Please_. Stay out of this.” 

He hesitated, just long enough for her to draw even with the others, and Renji did something in the air with his zanpakutō, opening another gate. He took half a step forward, raising an arm—to summon his bow or reach for her shoulder, he did not know. 

“Rukia-san!” What he could not deny was that but a second later, they were gone. _She_ was gone. 

And he had done nothing to stop it.

* * *

“So, Ishida-kun. Just how long are you planning on moping around?” 

His chopsticks paused halfway to his mouth. Uryū stared at the noodles on the end for several seconds, watching the steam curl languidly up into the air. From the periphery, he could make out a pair of bright eyes fixed unblinkingly upon him, but he didn’t acknowledge her, and a moment later the flavor of soba hit his tongue. He barely noticed the dull stimulation. Was it possible for something to taste like the color grey? If so, he was fairly certain this was that sensation. 

He swallowed, lowering the implements back to his bowl. “I’m not moping.”

“You’re a terrible liar.”

He finally spared her a glance from the corner of his eye. Yoruichi sat with her legs crossed, one knee bouncing slightly, arms folded over her chest. He was fairly certain she still hadn’t blinked. “I am not.”

“So how come you haven’t taken your room back yet? You can’t tell me you enjoy being in with the kids.” He did not, but he made no comment, returning to his noodles.

Or he would have, if his hands were not suddenly empty. “I hate you,” he informed her tonelessly. He was answered only by rapid slurping sounds, followed by the clatter of the bowl and its implements hitting the table. 

“No, you hate that your friend is gone.”

“We weren’t friends.”

“Bullshit!” Yoruichi smacked both of her hands on her knees and leaned forward, deliberately invading his personal space and forcing him to lean back to keep a decent distance between their faces. She sneered at him. “You need to get the fuck over yourself, Ishida. This ‘I have no friends’ thing you’re doing isn’t fooling anyone but you.”

His eyes reduced to slits, and he sneered right back. “I knew her for a month and a half, Yoruichi. Even if we might have been friends eventually, which I doubt, we weren’t by three days ago, and now she’s gone. Back to Soul Society, where she belongs.” She’d as good as told him so, more than once. 

“You don’t believe that. You know what they’re going to do with her.” 

He did—it had been plain enough from the way Renji spoke. From the way Rukia reacted. 

“It’s not my choice to make, Yoruichi-san. It’s hers, and she made it. What use is it now, dwelling on this?” His jaw clenched, he swallowed past an inexplicable lump in his throat. 

Yoruichi snorted, rolling her eyes. “Ishida-kun. Do you think Rukia-chan is infallible?”

“What?” He blinked at her. 

“You heard me. Do you think she’s infallible? Perfect? Incapable of error?” She ticked the synonyms off on her fingers. 

“Of course not. She’s not a god or anything.” Well, despite the name anyway. 

The woman across from him looked at him like he was being particularly thick. “Well then, why are you treating her word like law?”

“Tch.” He scoffed, turning his head away. “It’s not that. But Rukia-san should be able to decide for herself what she wants. And she decided to go back to Soul Society. What right did I have to interfere with that?”

“What if you did have the right? If you could choose whether she lived or died, what would you choose?” The question was loaded, and she didn’t even try to conceal the fact. 

He swallowed, but he did not hesitate. “She would live.”

“And you regret it, don’t you? You regret that you didn’t fight them there, the both of them, so that she could live.” Her eyes fell half-lidded, reminding him strongly of her cat-shape.

“Regardless, Yoruichi-san, I have no right to tell her what decisions to make. Rukia-san is her own person, and if I tried to take away her choices, I would be no better than the shinigami who came to arrest her.” He let an edge sharpen his tone—it wasn’t right to force someone else to obey oneself; it took away their ability to choose, and to learn what it was to be responsible for their own decisions. Such a person could never learn to live truly to themselves.

She narrowed her eyes further, looking at him through glimmering golden slivers. “Here’s the thing about friends, Ishida-kun. We get to interfere sometimes, when our friends make stupid choices. That’s all the _right_ we need.” He started to speak, but she raised a hand to cut him off, leaning forward again.

“Besides, even if you weren’t friends, you were her ally. You might be the only one she has left. Could you live with yourself if you knew she was facing down her death, and you _didn’t even lift a finger_ to help her?”

“You—” Uryū was halfway to his feet, but Yoruichi had already made it to the door. 

“Kisuke! He’s all yours!” she called, then met his eyes over her shoulder and held them. “You do have friends, Ishida. Don’t you dare forget it.”

And then she was gone.

* * *

“Is that all you’re going to show me? Disappointing.” Urahara raised an arm to block Uryū’s hit, knocking away the attempted punch without any apparent effort at all. Gritting his teeth, Uryū jumped back, manifesting Ginrei Kojaku in his right hand and firing off three arrows in quick succession. 

Urahara simply wasn’t there when the first two landed, and though Uryū curved the trajectory of the third, it missed as well as the shopkeeper took another sudden leap, this one forward. Uryū moved to block, but wasn’t fast enough, and a sudden impact in his left side sent him flying, picking his feet up from the ground and flinging him through the air. 

He landed hard several meters away, rolling several times before he could pull himself to his feet. 

“You’re not thinking, Ishida-kun. When you hit with _hakuda_ , all you remember is _hakuda_. When you shoot your bow, all you remember is how to shoot. When you use _hirenkyaku_ , all you remember is _hirenkyaku_. That’s not going to be good enough.” Urahara tipped his hat back on his head a little bit, humming a single note. 

“Let’s try something new.” From his sleeve, he slid a small object, tossing it in Uryū’s direction. It glinted in the artificial light of the training area, and Uryū snatched it out of the air. 

“What is this?” It looked to be a tube, of sorts, made of some kind of silvery metal and about the shape and heft of a substantial sword hilt, though it lacked any of the typical decorative features of a katana. 

“Seele Schneider,” Urahara replied, a lopsided smirk blooming over his face. “The Quincy’s closest answer to this.” He gripped the top of his cane, extracting a thin blade from the interior. Uryū frowned for a moment, then sucked in his breath as he felt it. 

“That sword has reiatsu.”

“Ah, very good,” Urahara replied, the smirk remaining. Uryū felt a sudden shift in the shopkeeper’s reiatsu as well, and took the mysterious rod he’d been handed in a left-handed grip. 

“ _Okiro, Benihime_.” With a flash of red light, the thin blade from the cane changed shape, becoming a straight-edged sword with an oddly-angled end, the blade only on one side and a red tassel at the base of the hilt. If he’d suspected before, Uryū knew now: Urahara had a zanpakutō. 

“Lesson one, Ishida-kun,” he said, discarding the sword’s sheath and bending at the knees. 

“Cut me.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Term Dictionary_ :
> 
>  _Benihime_ – 紅姫 – “Crimson Princess.” Urahara’s zanpakutō. Really, really awesome and scary strong if you spend as much time as I do thinking about possible applications of their abilities. Her release command is _okiro_ (起きろ), "awaken." 
> 
> _Ginrei Kojaku_ – 銀嶺弧雀 – “Arc Sparrow of the Silver Peak.” It’s the version of Uryū’s bow that looks like a web at the front; considering that he’s been training with a knowledgeable teacher for over a year at this point, it seemed reasonable to me that he would already have it. (Consider what he was able to do by himself in a week!)
> 
>  _Seele Schneider_ –魂を切り裂 – “That which slits the soul” (and also a pun with a German phrase meaning “soul cutter”). The arrow-sword is here, folks. It’s going to see a lot of use very soon.
> 
> * * *
> 
> Next chapter will probably be alternating POV, but understandably the emphasis is going to be on Uryū's side of things for a while, because he's doing stuff and Rukia is stuck in prison. I do plan to explore her dynamic with Renji and Byakuya a little more, though, so she'll get some scenes in any case. I'd love to know what you all are most interested in seeing. 
> 
> Also, I'm taking suggestions for possible matchups when Uryū and co. get to Soul Society. He's not going to be getting the Mayuri reveal here; I have special plans for that which will play a big role in a future fic in this series, so... taking suggestions for people he should fight instead.


	6. Precipitate

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Precipitate: _transitive verb_ , \pri-ˈsi-pə-ˌtāt\  
> 1\. to bring about especially abruptly
> 
>  _intransitive verb_ , \pri-ˈsi-pə-ˌtāt\  
> 2\. to move or act with violent speed; to fall headlong
> 
>  _noun_ , \pri-ˈsi-pə-tət\  
> 3\. a product, result, or outcome of some process or action

The sekkiseki walls of the repentance cell were a bright, unforgiving white, stark in their cleanliness. She wondered if anyone ever placed in here had railed against it, tried to destroy the stone, defile the harsh purity of their prison, or if they, like she, had all felt something like this strange kind of dim, enforced calm. She was a dead woman, in all but technicality, and she sat in her mausoleum. 

There was a window, a thin one that stretched high, letting her look out upon a narrow sky. Pale blue, with thin, wispy clouds drifting across, at the mercy of the wind. 

They’d brought the chair from the cell she’d been in earlier, she supposed a concession to her nobility, but the only one it would afford her. She scoffed softly to herself, recalling Renji’s earlier entreaties. His firm belief that Byakuya would appeal to the Central 46 on her behalf. His surprise when he learned that wasn’t the case at all. She wished he wouldn't think about it—if she knew Renji, that wouldn’t end well for him. 

Rukia sat with her hands folded in her lap, staring out the window at the sliver of the outside world she was permitted to see. Perhaps her eyes should be resting upon the Sōkyoku, upon the hill where she would die, but she found them drawn to the sky instead. For some reason, the clouds held her attention, and she didn’t question it. At least if she spent her time looking at them, she’d think less about everything else. There was a kind of peace in that. 

“Rukia.” 

But some people were the antithesis of quiet resignation. 

She didn’t turn to look at him, but as before, this was no deterrent to him. “They’ve moved your execution date. You have three weeks.” He fell silent, and she supposed he expected her to respond. But Rukia found that she simply had nothing to say. Whether she died in three weeks or four was a curiously-meaningless distinction. The red collar around her neck itched, but she had no inclination to rub at it, or alleviate the irritation. 

“Rukia!” Renji’s voice was louder now, closer; she would have jumped in her chair, except that her muscles were so relaxed that they couldn’t even tense fast enough to react that way. “Didn’t you hear me? They’re going to—”

She did turn then, just enough to look at him from the corner of an eye. She wondered when he’d become this man, this fukutaicho of her brother’s division. Was there anything in him still from before? It had been so long since they’d spoken that she honestly had no idea. 

“I heard you, Renji.”

Rukia turned back to face forward, letting out a soft breath, seeking the clouds again. 

What did they remind her of?

* * *

It occurred to him, in a peculiar, distant way, that he really had no idea how much time had passed. Uryū knew he’d been here, fighting Urahara, for a very long time, but the usual markers by which he could get an intuitive feel for time’s passing, like hunger or fatigue in the normal sense, were simply absent. He had the feeling he was probably just sustaining his body exclusively on reishi at this point, and without any idea of how much time went by, he couldn’t say how much remained, either. 

Urahara had said that there was usually a month of grace period before an execution, and that they wouldn’t use all of that before Uryū embarked, but he’d been otherwise just as nonspecific as usual. Uryū grit his teeth and flashed away from his spot again, the blowback from Urahara’s red energy attack pushing him even further than he’d aimed. 

The rock formation on which he’d been standing was nothing more than smithereens. 

Sucking in a sharp breath, he pivoted, bringing up the Seele Schneider in his left hand, bracing it with both to fend off the slice Urahara, still grinning, aimed for his shoulder. It would seem that the shopkeeper really meant to kill him, if he couldn’t keep up. It had been like this since the beginning, with not even a moment’s pause. Urahara could easily lecture and attempt murder at the same time, when the mood took him. 

“Faster,” his cheerful assassin demanded, and Uryū complied, pushing off with another _hirenkyaku_ , reappearing behind Urahara’s back. He lunged with the Seele Schneider in a fencing stab, but only succeeded in jarring his arm as he hit one of Benihime’s red shields. To his own surprise, he left a small crack dead in the center of it, and Urahara placed his free hand on his hat, half turning to examine the damage. 

“You don’t mess around, do you, Ishida-kun?”

“You’re trying to kill me. The least I could do is return the favor,” Uryū replied flatly, finding another reishi stream and jumping away on it. 

Urahara kept pace easily, and they came to a stop atop another of the many rock formations, one of a slowly-dwindling number of them that remained intact. “Good. You’ll need that.” Benihime flashed forward, nearly too fast for Uryū’s eyes to track, but he caught a glint in the middle of her arc, and braced his free hand with more reishi, blocking with a _hakuda_ move and turning her aside with his palm, twisting with his momentum and slashing with his own blade. 

Urahara _moved_ , quickly enough to disappear completely from his every sense, and reappeared at a distance, swinging his zanpakutō, another arc of carmine light bleeding from the sword’s edge and flying towards Uryū. 

In his right hand, Uryū manifested Ginrei Kojaku, fitting the Seele Schneider itself to the string. His normal arrows weren’t strong enough to disperse something like that attack, but the blade was. Aiming quickly, he released his breath and the projectile at the same time, and it met Urahara’s strike in midair with a massive burst of light. 

But Uryū was already making his next move, using _hirenkyaku_ to approach Urahara, the bright collision of their abilities only a screen. From ninety degrees to the shopkeeper’s left, he fired several arrows in quick succession, splitting most of them into dozens. None of them hit, but they did force Urahara to dodge in a specific direction—namely, to his right. 

At the same moment he let his last arrow fly, Uryū started moving himself there, anticipating where his opponent would most likely land based on previous observations of the default length of his shunpō. Urahara didn’t waste movement or energy, usually doing exactly what was required to neutralize an attack and no more, which should put him right—

“Looking for me?” Uryū raised Ginrei Kojaku mostly on instinct, successfully putting the bow between himself and Benihime, if only just. His arms trembled with the force of taking the hit dead-on, and he tried to flash away, only to find himself dogged step-by-step by Urahara, who simply would not relent. 

“What’s your best weapon, Ishida-kun?” Urahara asked conversationally, and Uryū grimaced, swinging them both around and flashing towards the ground where the Seele Schneider had fallen after its impact with the _nake_ blast. A swing from his foe forced him to jump, and he twisted himself in midair using reishi, grabbing the empty silver hilt from the ground on his way past. 

It was a strange device to use. As far as Uryū could tell, it made directing reishi flow to achieve a certain result much easier—and had interesting effects on attacks that relied primarily on reiatsu. But there was nothing about the empty hilt itself that was absolutely necessary to achieve the effect. It wasn’t a zanpakutō—it possessed no characteristics that could not be replicated with enough focus, in theory. 

It gave him an idea at least. 

Channeling more reishi into the Seele Schneider, Uryū rapidly changed directions, using the milliseconds extra that gave him before Urahara reappeared to dismiss Ginrei Kojaku, but not completely. This time, he let it fall back into the formless orb of reishi it began as, and tucked that hand slightly behind his back, keeping it out of his way for the moment. 

When Urahara came in next, he swung for Uryū’s right side, but the hit met empty air as they both blinked away again, Uryū intent on buying himself enough time to see if his new strategy was viable. 

“You still haven’t answered my question, you know,” Urahara remarked, firing off a kidō that generated a red ball of flames. Uryū sliced right through the center of it, the vibrating edge of the Seele Schneider breaking down the bonds in the attack’s particles, which he then gathered into his concealed right hand. 

The concentration required to juggle so many tasks at once took a toll, and Urahara scored a wide slash across his abdomen, opening up a crimson line diagonally from Uryū’s shoulder to his waist on the opposite side. Benihime’s edge was so keen that it didn’t hurt at all at first, but then the pain burst through his nerve endings all at once, ricocheting between his flesh and his brain, the sheer agony of it nearly forcing him to release his grip on the reitsu he gathered. 

But it was a pain he could use, because it was exactly like what he wanted to make. Sharp, thin, deadly. He turned his thoughts to these things, made them his will, and felt the reishi beginning to respond. Uryū let himself fall, giving up control of his positioning, confident that Urahara would end up doing that much work for him. 

“What do you have behind your back there, Ishida-kun?” Urahara asked, his smile ticking upwards a fraction. He flashed closer, shifting his grip on Benihime to stab. Uryū raised the Seele Schneider to block, and the blades wound up momentarily locked at close range, trapped between their bodies.

It was now or never. 

Uryū swung with the reishi in his other hand, formed into a knife composed entirely of reishi particles, modeled after the Seele Schneider, slashing upwards for the closest part of Urahara he could reach—his face. 

Half a second later, they both hit the ground, kicking up an enormous cloud of dust. Uryū decided that the impact didn’t hurt as much as he thought it would. As his senses returned, he realized that Urahara’s free hand was wrapped around his right wrist, and grimaced. 

But when the dust cleared, there was a thread-thin red line on the shopkeeper’s cheek. 

“Well done, Ishida-kun. You’ve cleared lesson one.”

* * *

The next time Renji came to see her, she heard him settle heavily into a seated position somewhere to her right. He didn’t enter her line of vision, or obstruct her view of the outside. 

In fact, for what must have been near an hour, he didn’t say anything at all. They both sat like that, silent and still, and Rukia watched the clouds go by.

* * *

Uryū couldn’t recall having been so hungry at any point in his life. He scarfed food more like Yoruichi did than his own usual capacity, and found that even that was unsatisfying, though it took the edge off. 

After his emergence from Urahara’s basement training room, it seemed all the appetitive needs that had simply ceased therein came roaring back with a vengeance. He’d passed out for twelve straight hours, only to be shaken awake by Tsukabishi—he didn’t have time to waste, considering. 

Urahara sat in the room with him, his eyes somewhere else and his fan tapping periodically on his chin to some metronome rhythm Uryū could not discern the source of. Setting down the last of his bowls, he placed his chopsticks neatly together and lay them down, blotting his mouth with a cloth napkin, though it was not strictly necessary. 

The motion must have drawn Urahara’s attention, because by the time Uryū had set it down and glanced back up, the other man’s eyes were fixed on him, calculating more openly than usual. “It’s your mind,” he said, seemingly apropos of nothing. 

But Uryū caught on. “That seems unlikely. Shinigami live a long time, don’t they? Wouldn’t they be more trained in tactics and analysis than I am?”

One corner of Urahara’s mouth tilted upwards. “Yes, but that doesn’t really mean anything.” When Uryū only blinked at him, he continued. “Listen, Ishida-kun, in a real battle, abstract stuff like that doesn’t go very far. To win, you have to be prepared, that’s true, but more important even than that, you have to be adaptable. The loser is always the one who couldn’t think fast enough. Always.” 

Uryū’s brows furrowed. “What would it matter how fast I could think, if I couldn’t do anything about it?”

Urahara tipped his head back slightly. “Oh, don’t mistake me. If you’re weaker in other ways, you have to think a lot more unconventionally—and a lot faster—to win. But nothing bridges a gap in power so fast as intelligence. It’s your strength. Don’t forget to use it.” He dragged a thumb across the nearly-healed cut along his cheekbone.

Frowning slightly, Uryū pulled in a breath. “I guess we’ll be needing a plan, then.”

“Oh?”

“Preparedness, right?”

Urahara’s smile stretched into a grin. “It’s almost like you listen to what I say.”

Uryū scoffed. “Don’t get ahead of yourself.”

* * *

“Rukia?” 

There was a long pause. “Yes, Renji?”

“Why didn’t you come back, when you were summoned?” 

She heard him shift slightly, the rustle of his shihakusho loud in the pervasive silence of the repentance cell. Rukia let her eyes fall shut, which only amplified it. She could hear him breathing. For a moment, it was easy to imagine that they were children again, sleeping pressed together with their friends in a cramped little Rukongai shack. 

“Does it matter?”

“Of course it does!” Renji snarled the words like an emaciated cur-hound. If she looked at him, she knew she’d see the sound reflected on his face—he wore everything so openly. The muscle in his jaw would flex as he clenched it and his upper lip would be nearly pulled back from his teeth. He’d be trying to bore holes in her with his stare; she could feel it even now. 

Rukia pulled her eyes open, staving off oblivion, and looked at the edge of her window, the white stone bleached brighter by the incoming sun. So bright it almost hurt to look at. Defiant, luminous in a world composed of ever-darkening grey tones. She knew what _that_ reminded her of. 

“I couldn’t. The day I landed, I was poisoned by a Hollow. It depleted my reiryoku; I couldn’t even hear Sode no Shirayuki for a month afterwards. And then… I still couldn’t release her.” Her eyes began to water from how hard she focused on the glare off the stone. 

Renji was silent for a long time. “And the human?”

She let out a slow breath. “He saved me,” was all she said. 

“If you just explained yourself, maybe the Central 46 would—”

She shook her head, just once, slowly. “If they were interested in my version of events, they would have asked for it already.” And if she told them, she risked exposing greater crimes. This was better than that. 

_If you’re going to die, at least make it mean something_.

So she would.

* * *

“What’s that?” Uryū belted on the small brace of Seele Schneiders Urahara had given him, adjusting the collar of his uniform. He was reaching for the mantle when Yoruichi handed him the bundle of black fabric she was carrying. 

“Just a little something to help this plan of yours. It will completely suppress your reiatsu, so you’ll be able to pass undetected through Soul Society, as long as you stay out of range of the other senses.” He unfolded the object, finding that it was a black, hooded cloak. It did feel strange to him, as though he wouldn’t have believed it existed, except that he could see it and was holding it in his hands. 

He debated the mantle for a moment and sighed, throwing the cloak over his shoulders instead. Leaving the hood down for the moment, he double-checked the strap on the bundle at his back, adjusting it to lay flat across his chest, and then followed Yoruichi from the room, downstairs to the main area of the shop. It was closed up for the moment, all its residents gathered in the front. 

“We’ve still got a little time, if you’ve got any goodbyes you want to make,” Urahara informed him, one eyebrow disappearing beneath the shadow cast by the brim of his hat. 

For a moment, Uryū considered it, but swiftly dismissed the idea. Ryūken would only insist that he was being an idiot. Maybe he was. 

But it was the right thing to do, so he couldn’t say he cared. 

Instead, he turned and faced the other shop occupants, bowing from the waist. “You all have my thanks,” he said, a slight rasp on the edge of his voice. “For everything you have done.”

He felt a hand on his shoulder, and when he looked up, it was to find Yoruichi in front of him, half a smile on her face. “We’re not done yet,” she replied. “Me especially.” He blinked, surprised to note that she wore a smaller version of his own cloak. Uryū straightened from his bow, looking to the others. Tsukabishi was dabbing at the corner of an eye with his handkerchief, but Urahara’s face was obscured by his fan. 

“We should get to the basement,” he said, the words strange somehow but not identifiably so. “We’ve still got to get you through the gate.”

After accepting a nearly-bone-crushing hug from Ururu as well as a “don’t be a loser and die, Ishida,” from Jinta, he followed the other three back to the training ground, where a square portal of sorts had already been set up. 

“This will convert your kishi to reishi,” Urahara explained. “It’s a bit of a roundabout way to get into Soul Society, but unlike most methods, it’s reversible, so you’ll be able to come back afterwards.” He stowed his fan in his sleeve, and Uryū noted that he looked unusually pensive. 

“Of course, Tessai and I can’t keep it open forever. You’ll have about four minutes from the time you step inside until it collapses at this end. If that happens, you’ll be trapped between worlds, so don’t slow down.” The shopkeeper glanced at Yoruichi, something inscrutable passing over his face before he replaced it with a grin. 

“You’ll have to let me know if this works; I haven’t been able to use the thing in years!” Rubbing his hands together, he took up a position on one side of the gate, Tsukabishi standing opposite him at the other. 

Uryū felt himself blanch, but he supposed it was only one of dozens of things that _might_ kill him between now and the time he accomplished his goal. 

“Ready?” Yoruichi asked from beside him, her arms crossed. 

He pushed his glasses up his nose with his first two fingers, then pulled the hood of his cloak up over his head. “If I’m not, I guess I’ll know soon.”

She snorted, and then, with a burst of reiatsu, the gate was open, and they both stepped through.

* * *

“Don’t you have somewhere else to be, Renji?” Rukia’s voice came out wearier than she’d intended, but it was a fair question. A fukutaicho of the Gotei 13 had better things to do than sit here with a condemned prisoner, and yet here he was again, just like he was for some amount of time every single day. 

“You sending me away?”

Rukia’s fingers curled slightly in the fabric of her white yukata. “No,” she murmured. 

“Then I’ve got nowhere else to be just now.”

* * *

Uryū wasn’t sure exactly what he’d been expecting Soul Society to look like. 

But this—the traditional buildings, the way the people were dressed almost exclusively in kimono and yukata and haori with hakama and the like… somehow it squared. “Doesn’t Soul Society take in influence from any other cultures?” He asked Yoruichi as they walked, frowning slightly. “People die everywhere, don’t they?”

“Yeah, but nobody remembers who they used to be,” she pointed out. “Makes maintaining your monoculture of choice pretty easy, if you think about it.” She folded her hands behind her head, glancing askance at him before reaching over to yank his hood down. 

“Hey!”

“You only look more suspicious that way. No need to totally conceal ourselves yet. We’re just two more souls in a tide out here.” She returned her hand to the other, lacing her fingers together. 

Uryū tucked his hands into his pockets, still looking around. The gate had opened in midair, which wasn’t really all that shocking, considering who was operating it. Accidental or on purpose, the result probably would have been the same. “So who decides which culture that is?”

“Good question,” she replied, but she didn’t answer it. He rolled his eyes, taking another two hurried steps to catch up with her—she, at least, felt no need to look around. 

He could think of a dozen more things he wanted to ask, but really, most of them he knew the answer to already. They were obviously in the Rukongai, and probably one of the nicer areas, from the limited description he’d acquired from Rukia. What was more, he knew they were close to the Seireitei, because starvation looked pretty impossible here, if the architecture was anything to go by. 

“So how do we get into the Seireitei?” he asked, because that one, he hadn’t the faintest idea how to answer. 

Yoruichi hmm’ed, lifting her chin to angle her vision upward. “Well, if it were just me, I’d sneak in, but you’re not quite that stealthy yet. So we’re going to take a more direct approach, and _then_ hide.” 

“Direct how? Presumably we can’t just walk through the front door.”

“Of course not. Urahara and I have a friend who should be able to help, though. The only problem is, she tends to move around a lot, and I’m not exactly sure where her house is at right now.”

Uryū flattened his mouth into a straight line. “How are we supposed to find someone like that? Doesn’t the Rukongai have almost a hundred districts?”

“Eighty, yes. But we don’t have to look through all of them. She never goes any further out than the fourth, and besides that, she doesn’t like dense areas. Trust me when I say you’ll know her place when you see it.”

They walked in silence for a while, but after a few minutes, Uryū ventured another question, one that had been nagging him for some time. “Yoruichi, how long ago were you and Urahara-san and Tsukabishi-san shinigami?”

Her eyes rounded for just a moment, before narrowing with something he thought might be mirth. “Figured that out all by yourself, did you?”

He raised an eyebrow. “He has a zanpakutō. You all know more than you should about the Soul Society, including how to get into it. Tsukabishi-san is a better doctor than any actual doctor I’ve ever met. I didn’t have to think that hard.” 

She laughed, a surprisingly easy sound. “I suppose you didn’t. We were shinigami… well, it must have been more than a century ago now. A lifetime.” Yoruichi shook her head slightly. “Kisuke was a captain in the Gotei 13, of the Twelfth. He also founded the Research and Development Institute.”

“Somehow, I don’t find that unbelievable at all,” Uryū muttered. 

“Tessai was head of the Kidō Corps, which is separate from the Gotei 13 and also the Onmitsukidō, which I ran. I was additionally in charge of the Second.” 

“Sounds like you three were pretty important.”

She tilted her head at him. “Does that change your opinion of us? We weren’t just shinigami. We were captains, all of us.”

Uryū glanced at the ground, where gradually, the pavement had receded to gravel and then grass under their feet. Each tread he made produced a tiny rustle, but Yoruichi’s passage caused no perceptible sound at all. “I always knew there was something different about you,” he said at last. “And to be completely honest, I’ve had my suspicions for a while. But I never allowed myself to consider it too deeply until now. I didn’t want my thoughts about all of you to be… changed, because of it.”

Yoruichi was silent, but he could sense her expectancy. 

“But whatever you used to be… what you are now is…” Somehow, he couldn’t make himself say it. “Different,” he finished haltingly. “My thoughts stand as they were.”

He felt a hand atop his head, and she scrubbed her fingers back and forth through his hair. “There’s hope for you yet, kid.”

He scowled at her, trying to put his hair to rights, but all she did was laugh.

* * *

“Well… you were right about knowing it when I see it.”

The house, if it was properly called that, was dominated not only by the enormous, humanoid arms that jutted upwards from the ground, grasping a banner that proclaimed the residence to belong to one Kūkaku Shiba, but also an even bigger chimney, stretching towards the sky in defiance of every aesthetic sense Uryū would consider worthy of the name.

It really figured that all of Urahara’s friends would be just as eccentric as he was.

They were stopped on their way in by two identical-looking men, but once Yoruichi gave her name and claimed to be there to see this Kūkaku, they led the two of them in readily enough. They were brought into a large, central room with a polished wooden floor. 

At the end, smoking from a pipe, was a woman with only one arm. The second was a stump that ended just before the elbow, though there looked to be a shortsword of some kind strapped to the truncated limb, perhaps a kodachi. Her hair was disheveled by the bandages she wore loosely around her head, and the front of her revealing shirt had some kind of symbol on it, a clan designation, perhaps. 

She reclined at a relaxed angle, one of her legs bent at the knee with her foot flat on the floor and the other folded in from the side. Her eyes were keen when she caught sight of them, and tracked their progress inwards. 

A man sat beside her, to the right, smoking a second pipe. His appearance was somewhat less unusual—he kept his hair short and spiked upright, with a neatly-trimmed beard. He glanced in their direction, and Uryū was struck by the solemn downturn of his eyes, a marked contrast to the flamboyant colors of his kimono, which seemed to be pink and orange on white. 

“Yoruichi,” the woman greeted, removing the long stem of her pipe from between her teeth and holding it in her hand. “Long time, no see.”

Uryū’s companion grinned. “Kūkaku. Isshin. It’s been a while.”

* * *

Kūkaku leaned back, sighing theatrically. “I tell you what, Yoruichi. It’s a good thing I like danger, because this plan of yours is just the right side of suicidal.” She replaced the pipe in her mouth and fixed her sight on Uryū for a moment. “Funny, though. You don’t look like the type to be playing hero.”

He lifted both shoulders. “It’s a strange world out there,” he deadpanned, and she cracked a grin. 

“You’re damn right.” Moving her eyes back to Yoruichi, Kūkaku continued. “It’s gonna take a day or so to prepare the solution. I’m afraid I won’t be much company in the interim, but you can stick around if you don’t have any other place to stay.”

“Nonsense.” For the first time since exchanging greetings, the man named Isshin spoke. “They can stay with me.” 

Kūkaku nodded. “Seems fine to me. Just be back here tomorrow evening. We’ll launch at night—should at least give you a little advantage disappearing afterwards.” 

Yoruichi was herding him out the door before he could ask what she meant by _launch_.

* * *

Isshin’s house turned out to be extremely normal by comparison to Kūkaku’s. It was in the third district of the Rukongai, which if Uryū had to compare it to something, was basically an upper-middle-class area. The house itself was a tad more modern than its surroundings, and he couldn’t shake the impression that he’d met the man himself somewhere before. His face tugged at the edge of a memory, but he couldn’t identify why.

“Well, here we are,” Isshin announced cheerfully, unlocking the door and pushing it open before he stepped inside. “And where are my amazing, beloved daughters?!” This, he called out into the house itself, stepping out of his geta and leaving Yoruichi and Uryū to remove their own shoes as well. 

“Jeez, dad, can you stop being so obnoxious for once in your life?” The irritated voice was unmistakably feminine, and from a door in the hallway emerged a girl with dark hair, chopped at the level of her shoulders. The look on her face was distinctly unimpressed, and she scowled at Isshin before realizing that there were two people behind him.

“Oi, who are these weirdoes?” She squinted, wrinkling her nose slightly, and tilted her head to one side. “Is that Yoruichi?”

“Hello to you, too, Karin,” Yoruichi replied, her tone saturated with amusement. She crossed her arms over her chest. 

“Karin? What’s going on?” From up the stairs, another girl emerged, the same age as Karin, if Uryū had his guess. Unlike Karin, who was dressed in a sleeveless gi and a pair of hakama, the new arrival wore a simple green yukata with pink flowers on the bottom, and kept her golden-brown hair even shorter, no further than the nape of her neck. 

“Yuzu!” Isshin pronounced theatrically, launching himself up the stairs towards his daughter. “Your sister is being so cruel to me!” 

Yuzu blinked, stepping aside almost by reflex, such that her father went whizzing past her, thudding against… something upstairs. 

Yoruichi took one look at Uryū’s face and grinned. 

“You thought this was going to be less weird than staying with Kūkaku, didn’t you?”

* * *

Really, though, aside from Isshin’s tendency towards dramatics, it wasn’t so bad. Both of his daughters seemed reasonable enough. Karin’s vocabulary was coarse and Yuzu was a little shy, but in that respect, it was hardly different from being around Jinta and Ururu. The Kurosaki children were a fraction older, though, maybe fourteen or so. 

The five of them were gathered in the living room now, taking tea that Yuzu had made for them. Unlike a lot of fathers, Isshin seemed inclined to keep his daughters around, even during serious discussions. While Uryū wasn’t sure it was wise for too many people to know of their plans, Yoruichi seemed to find nothing wrong with it, so he didn’t register any complaints. 

“So, Yoruichi, fill me in a little bit here. What exactly are you trying to get into the Seireitei for, and why did you bring a Quincy with you?”

Uryū started, his eyes snapping to Isshin, who spared him a knowing half-smile before turning back to Yoruichi, who shook her head.

“This was Ishida’s idea, not mine. Ask him.”

Isshin blinked, but he didn’t seem all that surprised, simply tilting his head at Uryū. Yuzu was watching him too—Karin stared out the window, but the way her body language was oriented suggested she was paying more attention than she let on. 

“We intend to stop the execution of a prisoner within the Seireitei,” he said slowly, unsure how that would be taken, exactly. Kūkaku hadn’t asked many questions, focused more on logistics, like she just took it for a given that anything Urahara and Yoruichi were involved in was a thing worth doing. He could not be sure that Isshin would do the same. 

Both the man’s thick brows climbed his forehead. “Who?”

“…Rukia Kuchiki.” 

Isshin sucked in a breath, taking a sip of his tea. “Kuchiki, huh? Been a while since I heard that name. But this is a pretty risky thing to do, Ishida-kun. There has to be some kind of reason for it, right?”

Uryū compressed his lips. “It’s the right thing to do,” he said. “She’s there partly because she protected me from discovery. I intend to give her one more chance to decide she wants to live. That’s all.”

“Is that so?” Isshin wore a mild expression, and it made the melancholy of his eyes all that much more pronounced, with no grin to obscure it. “And what if she refuses?”

There were only a few gulps of tea left in his cup. Uryū drained it, setting it down carefully on the low table in front of him. “I don’t know.”

It felt like a bad answer, but Isshin didn’t seem to take it that way, instead simply nodding. “I see.” He paused a moment, then drew his usual mood around him like a cloak, turning to his daughters with a smile. 

“Karin, Yuzu. Why don’t the two of you take Ishida-kun for a tour of the house? I have a couple of things I want to talk over with Yoruichi.”

Karin’s eyes narrowed, but she chose not to fight the request, standing abruptly. “Yeah, sure, whatever. You coming, Ishida?” She tipped her head toward the door, arms crossed, and Yuzu gathered up the dishes from tea. Uryū paused to allow both to precede him, then shut the door behind them, leaving the other two to discuss whatever they would.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Term Dictionary_ :
> 
>  _Nake, Benihime_ – 啼け紅姫 – Literally “sing, Crimson Princess.” A shikai technique that Urahara uses to launch a wave of red energy at an opponent. Stronger when charged up for a few seconds beforehand. He can also use the command to generate the _Chikasumi no Tate_ , or “Blood Mist Shield,” shown but not named in this chapter.
> 
>  _Sekkiseki_ – 殺気石 – Literally “spirit reducing stone.” It’s the rock they build prisons out of for high-level offenders in Soul Society. It repels reiryoku.
> 
> * * *
> 
> Uryū’s training with Urahara also contained a Lesson Two, but I’ve omitted that one, because if it becomes important I can give the relevant details at the time. Gotta save some stuff for reveal later, right? 
> 
> Also, something about Renji just stabs my feels. I hope I've conveyed him well enough, but it's a challenge because I'm not in his head this fic and he's not the type to talk about his feelings.
> 
> Apologies that this chapter is up a day late; I’d actually finished writing it late last night, but I had to leave the editing to this afternoon, and I didn’t want to post the unedited chapter or anything. As usual, there are probably some errors I missed anyway, but hopefully they are small enough not to be distracting. 
> 
> As repentance, I leave you with the following two clues as to the subject matter of the next story in the series. My advice for interpreting them is to remember that not everything needs to be taken completely literally. The clues are:
> 
> 1\. The song “The Mother We Share” by CHVRCHES.  
> 2\. “So, Ishida-kun… how do you feel about dying?”
> 
> * * *
> 
> I’d love to hear guesses.


	7. Permeate

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Permeate: _intransitive verb_ , \ˈpər-mē-ˌāt\
> 
> 1\. to diffuse throughout or penetrate something  
> 2\. to pass through something, esp. a membrane, porous barrier, etc.

“You didn’t have to help me make dinner, Uryū-san.” Yuzu, washing vegetables in the sink, set a cabbage to the side. Uryū picked it up and started slicing, shredding the leaves into thin slivers. 

“Saves me from having to do it,” Karin put in from behind them. She sat perched on a stool in front of the island, her chin in one hand where she slouched over, watching them with dull interest. The modernity of the kitchen by comparison to what he’d have expected in the rest of Soul Society only lent credence to his theory that there was something different about these three. 

He shrugged, swiping fragments of cabbage stuck on the end of the blade into the pile of the same with sure, practiced movements. “It’s really not an inconvenience, Kurosaki-san. I find it familiar, actually.” Not much around here was—even his own body felt strange, in ways he was still attempting to quantify. 

Yuzu nodded, apparently satisfied by the explanation. “So I guess you’re from the living world too, then?”

“Yuzu!” Karin’s voice was sharp, and her sister flinched, but the damage had already been done. 

“Urahara said he’d used his gate a few years ago. I thought he meant for Yoruichi, but it was your family, wasn’t it?” He’d had a feeling he recognized Isshin, though he still couldn’t say how exactly. 

Karin sighed. “Yeah, it was us. We moved here like five years ago.” She didn’t elaborate further, and Uryū chose not to push. 

“What does your father do here?” he asked instead. 

Yuzu picked up the conversational thread, flowing easily with the change in topic. “He’s a doctor. People from all over the Rukongai come to see him. There’s a clinic attached to the back of the house—I’m not sure if you could see it when you came in.” 

Uryū wasn’t sure, but he supposed there might be something ironic about that. He debated mentioning his father’s occupation, trying to determine if the potential follow-up questions would be worth it. Karin saved him the trouble of deciding. 

“We help him sometimes, but he’s probably going to have to hire some people in a couple years.” He could hear her prop her second elbow on the counter, the backs of her heels thudding periodically against the crossbar of her seat. 

“Why’s that?”

“Because Yuzu and I are going to go to Shin’ō and become shinigami.”

“Well,” Yuzu amended, with considerably more circumspection, “we’re going to take the exams, anyway.”

Uryū suppressed his immediate negative reaction to that. Hadn’t they just heard that he was going to be breaking into the Seireitei to release a prisoner? “Is there some reason you want to do that?” he asked instead, exerting considerable effort to keep his voice politely interested.

“To fight Hollows and protect people, obviously,” Karin replied. A glance back over his shoulder confirmed that she was looking at him with one eyebrow lofted and her mouth pulled to the side. 

Yuzu handed him a pair of clean tomatoes, which he started cutting automatically. “Well… it’s also basically the only way anyone in Soul Society with any reiryoku can get training to deal with it.” She was staring at the onion she held in one hand, brows furrowed, though he wasn’t sure she actually saw it. “Even dad says it’s better to learn from the instructors there than him, and he knows a lot.”

“Hm.” Uryū hadn’t really thought about it that way before. If people could go into the academy with such a wide array of reasons, how similar or different were they after they’d finished there?

“Anyway,” Yuzu continued, perking back up and smiling at him, “it’s not for a couple of years yet. Aging is kind of weird in Soul Society, but they don’t take anyone younger than sixteen.”

There was something a little odd about trying to break into the Seireitei while technically being younger than anyone the shinigami would even admit into their school. Uryū decided not to think about it.

* * *

The following evening, having spent most of the day studiously avoiding the Kurosaki clinic portion of the house, Uryū stood outside the house, beside Yoruichi and across from Karin and Yuzu, thanking them for their hospitality. Or rather, that’s what Uryū did. Yoruichi was staring at the house itself, probably expecting Isshin. 

When he emerged, Uryū sighed. “Am I ever going to meet anyone who _wasn’t_ once a shinigami?” The uniform couldn’t mean anything else, though it was odd, in that Isshin wore some kind of white sash over his shoulder in addition to the black shihakusho. He wondered if it had anything in common with the elder Kuchiki’s scarf, but decided that was unlikely. 

“Urahara’s social network is limited,” Isshin said, a grin stretching across his face. “But I think you might be happy for the extra help, in the end. The Seireitei’s not an easy place to infiltrate, even with Yoruichi here on your side.”

“Wait… you’re going with us?” Uryū glanced at the girls, but neither of them seemed even remotely surprised. Karin wore her usual blasé scowl, and while Yuzu might have been a bit worried, she was smiling slightly. “Why?”

Isshin folded his arms over his chest. “To pay a debt,” he replied simply, and Uryū sighed, somehow certain that was all he was getting on the matter. Still, it was probably a good idea to have a third—sneaking around would be a little harder, but the boost in power was most likely worth it. Isshin seemed to be suppressing his reiatsu, but Uryū sensed a lot of it, in any case. 

With overly-dramatic farewells on Isshin’s part, they set off, the older man rubbing his arm where Karin had kicked him when he’d attempted to sweep her up into a bear hug. Uryū thought he probably would have done the same, in a similar situation, though he couldn’t imagine anyone in his life even attempting something like that. 

They set out just past twilight, and night had fallen in earnest by the time they reached the Shiba residence, cloaking everything in darkness. Out here, the only lights came from the house itself, though they seemed to have little discernible source. Uryū considered asking about it, but it probably wasn’t worth it at this point. 

Kūkaku met them at the gate, sparing a sigh when Isshin explained that he would be going as well. “Yeah? Well, just don’t be useless, Isshin. How long’s it been since you were in a real fight anyway?”

“So cruel, cousin,” Isshin whined by way of response. Uryū tried not to roll his eyes too hard. 

The head of the Shiba family led them down to the basement of her house, which opened up into a large chamber that had to be the base of the chimney. Uryū could make out the circle of light far above where the ambient moonlight filtered in, though it wasn’t strong enough to really affect much down here. 

“All right, here’s how this is going to work.” One of Kūkaku’s twin attendants passed her a large orb with a red symbol on it. The object looked almost like it was made of glass, but from the way she hefted it in her hand, it might have been heavier still. “This is the reishūkaku. It’s going to get your asses into the Seireitei, but only if you know what you’re doing." She eyed Uryū for a moment, giving her head a small shake. 

“Anyway, you’re all going to put your reiatsu into this thing, and it’ll form a cannonball, like this.” Uryū felt a shift in her energy, and a translucent white barrier formed around her in a perfect sphere. Kūkaku let it fade. “Then… we’re going to fire you out of the Kakaku Hō. It’ll get you the altitude, but the three of you will have to steer a bit after that. Isshin knows how to do it, so just do what he says.”

“You’re going to fire us out of a cannon at the Seireitei,” Uryū summarized, feeling his left eye twitch. “How could that possibly—” He was interrupted when the orb in Kūkaku’s hand came flying at his face. Taking a half step back, he caught it in both hands, noting that it was a great deal denser than it looked. 

“You want my help or not?” Kūkaku scowled at him. “This will work, if you can keep the cannonball stable. I’m not worried about Yoruichi or my idiot cousin here, but you could mess it up all by yourself, kid.” 

Uryū frowned at her, but she only put her hand on her hip. “So it comes down to you: do you stake everything on your own ability to do this, or do you give up now and go home? Doesn’t make any difference to me.” Her eyes narrowed at him.

“Focus reiatsu, you said?” he asked, and she nodded. 

Shifting his grip so that he held the reishūkaku at the bottom with one hand, he placed his other over the top of it, drawing on his reiryoku and channeling it outwards. The air in front of him shimmered, then solidified into a translucent barrier, much like Kūkaku’s, spherical and steady. He held it long enough to make sure he had the idea, then stopped the flow of energy. 

“I can do this.”

Kūkaku nodded. “Good. Now, the three of you get in position. We’re going to launch.”

* * *

Uryū had little idea how they’d actually reached this point. All he knew was that somehow, Kūkaku had indeed launched them out of a cannon, an incredibly disorienting and mildly-terrifying experience that he did not desire to repeat, after which point Isshin had directed them to shift the flow in their reiryoku and steered them towards the sekkiseki-generated shield that protected the Seireitei on all sides. Their arc had turned downwards moments ago, and they were now hurtling at impressive speed for the barrier.

It was of course at this moment that Uryū again began to question the plan. 

But the reiatsu of the other two was steady, and he held his own rigid as well, glancing down through the translucent cannonball and watching as the streets and buildings of the Seireitei grew larger in his field of vision. “Are you sure there’s really a—”

His words came to an abrupt halt when they suddenly hit something, a jarring impact so sudden that Uryū bit his own tongue. For a moment, they were held there, as if in suspended animation, electricity or something like it crackling around them, and then they were through, the barrier shattering beneath the force of their combined reiatsu and gravity doing the rest. 

He gritted his teeth, pulling in a breath through his nose and bracing for another impact, but then Isshin shifted beside him, and Uryū felt the cannonball slow as it approached the ground. The second collision managed to crack the pavement beneath them, but they only bounced once before coming to a settled stop, and all three of them released their connection to the reishūkaku. 

Uryū grimaced, spitting blood to the side. Yoruichi gave him a sideways look, a small smirk teasing the corner of her mouth, but she didn’t say anything, instead pulling up her hood and gesturing for him to do the same. 

All three of them fled the scene quickly, Isshin keeping pace with Uryū’s _hirenkyaku_ and Yoruichi’s _shunpō_ without any evident trouble. It would only be a matter of time before the night guard found the location of their landing—already, Uryū could hear the distant sound of an alarm, and the Seireitei stirring to life.

“This way,” Yoruichi said as soon as they’d halted their steps away from the landing site. “Knowing the Twelfth, it won’t be long before they have surveillance footage of our faces, so stay out of sight.” The other two nodded, and fell in line behind her, sticking to the shadows of buildings.

* * *

Renji was early this time. Rukia was only just watching the sun rise when he appeared behind her, the soft scuffs of his sandals on the stone beneath their feet the only evidence of his presence. She took in a deep breath, one which stuttered slightly when she felt his hand on her shoulder. 

“Three ryoka broke into the Seireitei last night,” he said, keeping his voice low enough that only she could hear. “One of them is an adolescent with glasses, dressed in white.”

Rukia’s eyes rounded. Sharply, she jerked backwards, whipping her head around to meet Renji’s eyes. Her throat felt dry, disbelief warring with something else in her chest, but she couldn’t deny that Renji was telling her the truth. She knew what he looked like when he lied, but his eyes were steady on hers, his mouth set into a solemn line. 

“Who is he, Rukia?” Renji pressed, still quiet. 

She shook her head slightly. “I don’t know. I thought I did, but…” 

But this was the last thing she’d expected. 

Renji’s hand left her shoulder as he stepped back, and slowly, carefully, she turned herself back towards her window. He was out there, somewhere. She bit her lip, unable to quite suppress a full-body shudder. Because he’d come, he, too, was going to die. 

_Ishida_ …

* * *

They awoke on the second evening after hiding out in some underground chamber that reminded Uryū strongly of Urahara’s basement. He would not have been surprised to learn that they were constructed by the same people with the same method. He didn’t ask though, focusing on packing away his few belongings before following Yoruichi away from the area, Isshin bringing up the rear.

Over the course of the last night, they’d progressed from the outer areas of the Seireitei to the divisional barracks. The numbers weren’t exactly organized from the outside in; rather, they were all on roughly the same tier, arranged in a circle. Each was quite large, and they walked mostly between the Eighth and the Ninth right now, or so he inferred from the occasional number-sigil on a barracks building or over a training field. 

They did their best to avoid any overt reiatsu signatures, but the area was so saturated with them that Uryū at least sometimes found it difficult to differentiate, and wound up using his ears and eyes just as much as his sense of spirit energy. He wondered if it was because everything here was made of reishi. But of course, anyone with a decent amount of reiryoku around here could suppress it, and so everyone ended up feeling more or less the same.

Which, in retrospect, was probably how they rounded a corner and ran into a captain. 

Initially, it was actually just a shower of flowers more than anything, except that the source was obviously a young-looking woman standing on the balcony of the building in front of them, a sour expression on her face as she tossed what looked like magenta rose petals down onto the ground. 

Uryū watched, brows knitted, while a rather impressively-built man wearing a pink kimono of all things over his shihakusho jumped from the same balcony, a clay jug and sake dishes in one hand, alighting on the moonlit stone of the courtyard in front of them with a smile. He straightened, tipping up his conical straw hat with his other hand, and favoring the group with a mild smile. 

“All three of them, eh? Such strange luck I have today, wouldn’t you say, lovely Nanao-chan?” 

The woman on the balcony upended the remainder of the flower petals on his head, scowling. 

“Shit,” Yoruichi muttered under her breath. “That’s Kyōraku.” 

Uryū recognized the name from their strategy meeting at Urahara’s. Kyōraku was the second name on the list of shinigami he absolutely should not engage for any reason, after only the Sōtaicho, Yamamoto. It seemed there wouldn’t be much choice. 

He moved his hand back for one of the Seele Schneider attached to his belt, but paused halfway there when Kyōraku called out to them. “Now now, no need for that,” he said, settling himself on the ground and removing the cork from the bottle of sake he carried. Uryū could hear the distinctive pop even as far as they were, and he saw the line of the captain’s shoulders ease back even further. “Instead of pointlessly fighting each other, why don’t we sit down for a drink? I see a couple of faces I recognize—we should catch up.”

“You can’t be serious.” Uryū resumed reaching for the silver tube at the small of his back, but Isshin stopped him with one large hand to his elbow. 

“Oh, he’s completely serious,” the other man said, shaking his head slightly even while a grin bloomed on his face. “I think I’ll take you up on that, Shunsui. Might be the only one, though, if that’s all right by you.”

Kyōraku tipped his head to the side, lifting one of the sake dishes to his mouth. “One out of three? I think that’s good enough. The old man can’t get mad at me for doing a third of the work, can he?”

“Sir, that is highly irresponsible of you.” The woman—Nanao—jumped down from her spot on the balcony, landing slightly behind and to the right of Kyōraku. “We have orders to detain or kill _all_ of the ryoka.” She pursed her lips, pushing her glasses up by nudging them higher on the left side. 

“Nanao-chan, that’s just mean. You should leave some of them for the other divisions. I hear Kenpachi-san is looking for them right now.” Kyōraku nodded subtly as Isshin sat down in front of him, and Yoruichi gripped Uryū’s sleeve. 

“He’s letting us go, but he won’t do so forever,” she murmured in his ear, her tone low and urgent. “We should get out of here, now.”

“But what about—” He glanced at Isshin. 

“He’ll be fine. Trust me, we need to go.” She pulled him along behind her, heading further inwards toward the center of the Seireitei.

They curved away from the Eighth Division, Yoruichi periodically pausing and reorienting them around approaching or nearby reiatsu signatures. Shinigami were still nearly everywhere, but their cloaks meant that most of the time, they went completely undetected. Uryū wasn’t even sure how Kyōraku had found them, but he might have been able to identify their location by seeking Isshin’s reiatsu, which was suppressed but not entirely hidden. 

They were a significant distance from the Eighth when Uryū decided it was safe to speak. “What was with him, anyway? He just let us go like that?”

Beside him, Yoruichi’s eyes narrowed. She sucked her teeth for a moment before responding. “Shunsui’s always had his own way of doing things. If he didn’t fight us, there’s a reason.”

“Do you think he knows why we’re here?”

“Ishida-kun, most likely anyone in the Seireitei with any details on Rukia’s time in the living world knows why we’re here, and that would include the captains.” 

“But if he knows, then—”

She turned her head to fix him with both eyes, almost luminous in the dark. “Maybe,” she conceded, “but it’s best not to expect too much. Any help we get from anyone here is going to be indirect at best. We’re still down a man, don’t forget that. Just because he didn’t get taken out with a zanpakutō doesn’t mean we haven’t sustained the loss.”

Uryū nodded, and the two of them darted to the next shadow. They were mostly past the division buildings now, headed towards the center of the Seireitei, but from the maps he’d looked at before, they would have to climb several large, bottlenecked staircases to reach their final destination: Sōkyoku Hill.

* * *

They mounted the steps at a sprint, knowing full well that it was an extended period of exposure no matter how fast they traveled. Uryū hit the last step and jumped into a _hirenkyaku_ , only to catch a glimpse of something out of the corner of his eye. 

Throwing himself to the side, he narrowly missed a blow, which crashed into the ground where he’d been standing. If they’d been hoping to make it any further without being noticed, it was clear that they’d failed. 

“Yoruichi, keep going!” Uryū called. He could tell from the speed of the attack alone that she would be able to outrun their assailant with ease, but he was slower, and besides that, one of them had to deal with this unless they wanted pursuit and a commotion all the way to their destination. 

She frowned, pausing mid-step to slide her eyes from him to Renji, who stood before them, blocking the path. Her eyes narrowed, but then she nodded slowly. “Don’t take too long, Ishida-kun.” She disappeared, leaving only an afterimage behind. 

Uryū, meanwhile, focused on the man blocking the way. “Your captain is not here this time,” he observed. 

Renji smiled jaggedly, but it didn’t quite reach his eyes. His sword, returned to its more solid form, rested over his shoulder. “I shouldn’t be here, either, but I knew you’d come this way. You’re here for Rukia, aren’t you?” Despite his inflection, it wasn’t really a question, and Uryū didn’t treat it like one, volunteering no answer. 

The smile on Renji’s face faded. “I don’t know what happened, and I don’t know what you are, but she’s protecting you. I’m going to relieve her of that _burden_!” On the last word, his voice rose to the pitch and volume of a shout, and he raised his sword, swinging it forward. The teeth of the blade separated as it coiled around like a snake, and Uryū had to jump from one _hirenkyaku_ stream to another just to stay out of its path. 

In his right hand, he called up Ginrei Kojaku, pulling back the string and firing an arrow, but with a wide sweep of his zanpakutō, Renji knocked away all those that threatened to hit him, sending the sword for Uryū’s legs. The motion was faster than anticipated, faster than such an object should have been able to reverse direction. 

It nicked the side of Uryū’s left shin as it passed, but he dodged fast enough to avoid anything worse than a thin slice, twisting in the air and shooting another two arrows. They split as well, curving in towards Renji from both directions. His lips pulling back from his teeth in half a snarl, the tattooed man flashed away, towards Uryū. 

He didn’t notice the third arrow until a millisecond before it struck, and moved aside, so that it embedded in his shoulder rather than his chest, where it had been aimed. A flare of reiatsu fizzled it out, leaving a bloody hole in his flesh. Renji rolled the joint experimentally, frowning and fixing his eyes on Uryū, who’d landed across from him at a distance, another arrow already drawn. 

“Now I understand.”

Uryū did not move. “Good. That means I don’t need to explain it to you.”

Renji smirked. “Then what are you waiting for? Let’s go.”

He leaped.

* * *

On the floor of her cell, Rukia dreamed of rain.

* * *

“Ngh!” Uryū clenched his teeth as the zanpakuto bit deep into his shoulder. Its flexibility and motion were faster and more versatile than he’d expected—it seemed to be able to move in almost any direction without a corresponding arm motion from Renji. He had to be using his reiryoku to manipulate it. 

The blow left his right arm dangling at his side, and Uryū blinked away with a _hirenkyaku_ before Renji could follow up. Retreating and firing from a distance was getting him nowhere, so he moved forward, towards the other man, drawing a Seele Schneider from the brace of them at his waist. This time, when the zanpakutō curled around towards him, he was ready, and raised the reishi blade to parry. 

They met with a cluster of sparks and a sharp clanging sound, accompanied by a high-pitched buzz as the particles vibrating at the Seele Schneider’s edge began to disintegrate the bonds holding the zanpakutō together. Renji pulled his sword back abruptly, a breath hissing out from between his clenched teeth. The joints locked together again, and he lunged forward, swinging it two handed in a brutal arc, aimed for Uryū’s other shoulder. 

He was too slow, and Uryū twisted out of the way, going in low with his shorter blade and ducking under Renji’s right arm, shifting the Seele Schneider into a reverse grip and cutting into the back of the other man’s leg. He’d aimed for the knee-joint, but Renji reacted quickly, and Uryū felt the flesh of his calf give way instead, even as the shinigami’s sword wound serpentine around his back and struck. 

It hit the stone beneath them, Uryū rolling away just in time, and Renji whipped around, lashing with the sword at medium distance, easily its most effective attack range. Grimacing, Uryū jumped further back, the very edge of the jointed blade slicing through a few of his hairs with a soft _snkt_ , the dark strands floating to the ground. 

Renji applied a burst of reiatsu, and Uryū felt suddenly weighted, the abruptness of the change enough to throw off his balance for a split second, enough time for the zanpakutō to swing back around. Unable to dodge, he blocked, the muscles in his left arm snapping rigid as he strained to hold off the powerful blow with only one hand. 

“Give up, Quincy!” Renji urged, withdrawing the blade and snapping it out again. Uryū ducked, feeling the air as it passed by over his head with a whistle. But he was adjusted to Renji’s reiatsu now, and flashed away before the sword could reverse direction and hit him from the other side. “You’re not gonna beat me!”

Currently out of the zanpakutō’s range, Uryū released a steady breath. Blinking slowly, he raised a hand to his shoulder and formed thin threads of reishi there, feeling them wind around the slashed limb. Renji had managed to slice right through one of his tendons, which would, under ordinary circumstances, render the arm completely useless. 

“You aren’t stronger than I am, Renji,” Uryū replied, waiting for the technique to take full effect. “And you _certainly_ aren’t smarter than I am. The fight is already mine; you just haven’t realized it yet.”

Renji scowled, eyes hard, and raised his zanpakutō again. “You’re delusional.”

“No,” Uryū replied, “just adaptable.” 

This time, when Renji closed distance and swung, Uryū was ready. He let it close before moving away with _hirenkyaku_ , appearing right behind Renji, who attempted to adjust the zanpakutō’s trajectory. He was quick, but always a little slower when moving the sword into a blind spot, and Uryū took advantage, leaving a broad slash at his back before stepping away again. Renji tried to end the battle with every single blow he made, and for a while, Uryū had tried to fight that way, too. But that was playing to Renji’s strengths, not his own. 

Pushing himself faster, Uryū curved around to Renji’s side, shifting his grip on his Seele Schneider and waiting. It was a game of quick strikes and evasion, not heavy hits meant to fell in one decisive stroke, and slowly, Renji began to accumulate more and more injuries, gradually slowing down as they became too much, all together, for his body to withstand. When Uryū believed he had enough of a speed advantage, he let himself stand in place for just half a second too long, leaning back when the zanpakutō came flying for his face, then stabbing with his reishi blade. 

The Schneider caught Renji’s zanpakutō at one of the expanded joints, and Uryū drove it down with both hands, one animated by the _ransōtengai_ he’d created earlier, the force, combined with the Quincy blade’s cutting edge, punching a hole right through the zanpakuto and then the ground below, splitting stone even as it staked the saw-toothed blade to the floor. 

From his position on one knee, Uryū capitalized on the advantage, quickly manifesting Ginrei Kojaku and drawing back the string, loosing a single arrow that he concentrated rather than split. 

It struck the stunned Renji right where he’d aimed it—millimeters from the heart, leaving a smoking hole of about an inch in diameter. Uryū’s bow faded as Renji slowly collapsed to his knees, then fell forward, like a tree hewn down in a forest. Beside him, the zanpakutō snapped in half at the damaged joint, and Uryū removed his Seele Schneider from the ground, the _ransōtengai_ fading away into little silver threads of light, winking out after a few moments parted from his flesh. 

“Damn,” Renji rasped from his spot on the ground. “This hurts.” 

“I could say the same,” Uryū replied, raising his good hand to try and blot the blood still running freely from his injured shoulder. 

Renji made a noise then, what could have been the beginnings of a laugh, if it weren’t half-choked-off before it got there. “You’re gonna want to get out of here. People will be coming… they’d have felt my reiatsu.”

Uryū nodded, then remembered that Renji wasn’t looking in the right direction to be able to see. “I will.”

“Promise me, Quincy.” Uryū halted with a scuffing sound, half-turning to look back. “Promise me you’ll save her. Can you do that?”

Uryū sighed through his nose. “No. But if she wants it, I’ll help her save herself.” 

He picked up on the sounds of approaching people: a shout, followed by many footsteps. Pulling his hood back over his head, Uryū ducked between two buildings, in search of someplace to rest.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Term Dictionary_ :
> 
>  _Reishūkaku_ – 霊集核 – “Spirit gathering core.” It’s the fancy orb thing all the characters spend an episode trying to learn how to use before they get shot out of the cannon. 
> 
> _Kakaku Hō_ – 花鶴砲 – “Flower crane cannon.” The actual purpose of Kūkaku’s giant chimney.
> 
>  _Shunpō_ – 瞬歩 – “Flash step.” The fast movement technique that shinigami use. Yoruichi is famous for it. The Quincy equivalent is hirenkyaku.
> 
>  _Ransōtengai_ – 乱装天傀 – “Heavenly wild puppet suit.” Man, some of these literal translations are hilarious. Anyway, this is that thing Uryū does in his canonical fight with Mayuri where he moves his body around despite being dosed with paralytic poison. It was developed originally by elderly Quincy who needed to keep fighting despite their slower, less responsive bodies. It allows for a form of self-puppetry.
> 
> * * *
> 
> Well, things are certainly moving now. Next time, a domino is tipped over, more fighting happens, and poor Hanatarō puts in an appearance. Also: I'm trying to improve my fight scenes for coherence, clarity, and excitement. I'd love to know how I did.


	8. Ignite

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ignite: _transitive verb_ , \ig-ˈnīt\
> 
> 1\. to subject to fire or set aflame  
> 2\. to render luminous with heat  
> 3\. to set in motion

The contents of Uryū’s satchel lay spread out on the ground before him. Mostly, he’d packed medical supplies, but there were also a couple of emergency food items, some water, a needle and thread, and, set carefully aside, an oblong lacquer case and small glass bottle of ink. He picked up the needle, attempting to unspool the thread with little success. Stitching himself back together was mandatory if he was to continue, but he was finding it difficult to get there with only one functional arm. 

Deliberately, Uryū set the needle between his teeth, applying a tiny burst of reishi to cut the thread. The end was jagged, so he smoothed it by pinching it between his fingers, then brought it up carefully to his mouth, crossing his eyes to be able to see what he was doing. He missed on the first pass, the thread striking the outside of the eye as he attempted to pass it through, and Uryū realized that something was causing a fine tremor in his limbs. 

Strangely, he didn’t feel all that tired, really. More than anything, his injury was hindering him, but he somehow knew that if he could take care of it, even to the extent he was capable of with living world techniques, he could still get up and keep moving. Perhaps he’d gained more from his time in Urahara’s basement than he’d initially believed. It was just like that man to sneak such conditioning in to what seemed to be completely different endeavors. 

On the second attempt, the end passed through the eye, and Uryū pulled it out the other side, adjusting the thread so that the needle rested in the middle of its length. Tying a knot might be more difficult still, but he had enough practice sewing that he knew he’d be able to figure something out. Granted, he wasn’t usually stitching _flesh_ , but the basic principle was the same.

Something registered on the edge of his senses, and Uryū abruptly dropped the needle beside him, his fingers finding the empty hilt of his Seele Schneider and channeling reishi through it. The blade extended, luminous and blue-white, as the door to the small storage shed he’d hidden himself in slid open. 

The person on the other side of the door immediately held both of his hands up at the level of his chest, palms out, and Uryū heard him take in a sharp breath. “P-please,” he stuttered, “I’m not here to fight.”

Uryū did not deactivate the Seele Schneider, but he didn’t immediately move to stand, either, not eager to aggravate his injury when he’d only just managed to stop the worst of the bleeding in preparation for stitches. The shinigami in front of him had to be one of the least-dangerous-looking people he’d ever encountered, but he knew that counted for absolutely nothing around here. The man had a youthful face, wide eyes with a notable downturn at the outer edges, lending him a slightly pathetic aspect, like a puppy. His hair hung around his face to his chin, and though he carried no visible zanpakutō, there was a white sash with some kind of greenish strap laying across his chest. 

“Then what do you want?” Uryū asked, shifting slightly in his seat. “Get in here and shut the door behind you.” If it remained gaping open like that, someone would wander by and see him. 

The shinigami jumped slightly, turning around hastily and shutting the door with a soft click. “I’m Hanatarō Yamada,” he said, folding his hands in front of him and bowing. “Seventh seat of the Fourth Division.”

Uryū’s frown deepened. The Fourth was healing and support, but their captain was third on the list of people not to fight. Some woman named Unohana. “What do you want?” he repeated, enunciating each word crisply. 

“O-oh, um… it’s just… you’re one of the ryoka, right? There’s a rumor that you’re here to help Rukia Kuchiki.” Hanatarō straightened from his bow, blinking his wide eyes. 

“And if I am?”

With a conspicuous indrawn breath, Hanatarō stood as tall as his spare centimeters would allow. “I want to help you. Rukia-san doesn’t deserve to die, and if you plan to stop the execution, I could be useful.”

Uryū appraised him for several long moments, but though Hanatarō’s posture wavered slightly, his eyes remained surprisingly steady. With a hissing exhale, Uryū dipped his chin. “Fine. But as you can see, I’m not in much shape to be continuing right now. I don’t suppose you can do something about that?”

Hanatarō perked up immediately, smiling a bit and nodding vigorously. “I can. This is exactly what I’m good at.” When Uryū raised an eyebrow, Hanatarō had the grace to color slightly. “Sorry. I’m not glad you’re injured or anything. I just… I’m relieved there’s a way for me to help after all.”

He approached carefully, moving his hands again so that Uryū could see them the whole time, and the latter finally let the reishi in his Schneider dissipate. Hanatarō’s hands lit with a gentle light, and Uryū carefully removed the fabric he’d been using to blot his shoulder wound, pulling it away and tearing the sleeve from his uniform to give the healer access to the whole thing. The shinigami murmured something vaguely sympathetic, then set to work. 

Uryū studied the process, interested by the way the kidō worked. He wondered if this was the kind of thing Tsukabishi did when his patients weren’t conscious to know about it. It seemed likely. He could almost feel his muscles knitting together. 

“It’s strange,” Hanatarō observed. “You didn’t really take any reiryoku damage at all. It’s still there for me to use.” 

Uryū shrugged his good shoulder. “I don’t really use it for anything.” His Quincy abilities just pulled reishi from the environment. The only way he knew he had reiryoku at all was that he occasionally produced reiatsu, but it wasn’t something he’d ever bothered learning to control, since it was so unnecessary for his purposes. 

“Well, it makes healing you easier, so I guess you’re lucky in that way.” 

For a beat too long, Uryū was silent. Then: “You’re an optimist, aren’t you, Hanatarō-san?” 

The healer looked at him, tilting his head to the side. “I suppose so, yes.”

Uryū’s skin itched where it melded back together, but he kept his good hand at his side, still wrapped around the Seele Schneider. “How did you find me, anyway?” Uryū eyed the tear in his cloak, now only half over his back. Perhaps it wasn’t functioning properly in its current state. 

“Oh, um… you were bleeding. I started from where Renji was, and got lucky, I guess.”

The temptation to immediately stand up was great, but Hanatarō hadn’t finished, so Uryū forced himself to stay put. “If you got lucky, someone else could too.”

“I hadn’t thought of that,” Hanatarō admitted. “But it’s not like most shinigami know enough medical kidō to identify what sort of person a bloodstain came from.”

Uryū eased fractionally, pulling his cloak the rest of the way back over his shoulder when Hanatarō withdrew. Tipping his head back against the wall, he eyed the shinigami, slightly blurry beneath the edge of his glasses. “Why do you care what happens to Rukia anyway?”

Hanatarō hummed. “It doesn’t seem right,” he confessed, removing the gloves he’d donned as part of his preparations. “The crimes Rukia-san was accused of… and the person I met when I was assigned to bring her food, they just don’t match up.”

“And you’re going to commit treason against your government because you aren’t sure Rukia did what she’s accused of?” Uryū rolled his shoulder. No pain at all; full mobility, in fact. Hanatarō must be talented. 

“Not exactly,” he replied. “It’s just… no one cared about Rukia-san’s reasons, or even asked her about them. And killing someone, without even knowing that… that just can’t be the right thing, can it?” Hanatarō lowered his eyes, shaking his head faintly. 

Uryū was silent for a moment, then sighed through his nose. “No. It can’t.”

* * *

“ _Aizen-taicho_!”

The shout, nearly an incoherent scream, tore Rukia from her dreams, and she sat up abruptly, pulling in a hard breath. Clambering to her feet, she went to the window, bracing her hands at the sides of it, trying to move her head forward enough to be able to see something aside from the hill and the Sōkyoku, to no avail.

The screaming devolved after that, until it was nearly-formless grief and rage, a far cry from the urgent, but controlled alarms she could periodically hear from elsewhere in the Seireitei. Someone… someone was heartbroken, in a way Rukia understood better than she would have liked to. 

With a shuddering exhale, she staggered back from the window, until it again framed nothing but sky. 

What was going _on_ out there?

* * *

“Hanatarō? Did you hear that?” Uryū turned, brows furrowed, back they way they’d come. It had been only faint, but he could have sworn he heard a shout, and it would have had to be quite loud to reach all the way down here. 

In front of him, Hanatarō stepped around a small puddle. Most of the sewerage ran parallel to their path and not directly in the way, but they clung close to the walls anyway, though Uryū didn’t touch anything down here. The smell wasn’t as bad as he’d expected, but he was disinclined to take any chances. 

“Hear what?” the young shinigami asked, and Uryū shook his head, letting the matter drop. 

“It’s nothing.”

Hanatarō had informed him that their best chance of getting to the center of the Seireitei undetected was through the sewers, which made sense, in all honesty. Fortunately, Uryū’s new shinigami guide also knew how to navigate them. It made detecting reiatsu more difficult, considering how closed in they were, but that was a price they were willing to pay.

“Hm. We’re going to have to surface here for a bit, Ishida-san.” Hanatarō pointed, and in the wan light, Uryū caught sight of the dull metal bars composing a ladder. He nodded, taking hold of one of the rungs and swinging upwards. A few steps carried him to the top, and he shouldered away the opening to the surface, pausing for a moment to glance around before shoving it the rest of the way and hopping out. 

Hanatarō clambered up behind him, and they were both darting for cover when a call reached them from above. “Oi, you two!”

Uryū’s head snapped up, his gaze fixing on the roof they moved towards. There, leaning casually back on her hands, sat Yoruichi, legs swinging over the end of the tiled expanse. 

“Glad I found you, Ishida-kun. I had a feeling you’d come this way, though I wasn’t expecting you to use the sewer.” She jumped down, landing softly on the ground in front of them and crossing her arms. 

“So. Who’s your friend?”

* * *

The barracks of the Thirteenth were rather collected by comparison to the rest of the Seireitei. Uryū hadn’t exactly been happy to backtrack, but Yoruichi had assured him that it would be worth it for the payoff, so he’d followed, Hanatarō in tow. 

At present, he found himself in the captain’s office, sitting across from a man with loose, snow-white hair and one of the white haori that the division heads all wore in some form or another. Jūshiro Ukitake, as he’d introduced himself, was patiently sipping tea while they waited for the rest of those that would be party to this meeting. His face seemed slightly drawn, his complexion almost a little too pale, but he held himself with a sort of incumbent dignity that Uryū encountered only seldom. 

His sigh disturbed the steam rising from his teacup, and he glanced up, meeting Uryū’s eyes with his own, which had the distinctive color of new leaves, bright against his dark brows. Ukitake’s mouth curved into a half-smile. “I’d hoped it wouldn’t come to this, you know,” he said, his voice heavy like clouds before rain. “But I suppose I was just slow to come to the realization that you’ve carried with you since the beginning, right?”

Uryū dropped his eyes, staring into the drab green tea in his cup. Through his gloves, it was warm in his hands. “Which one is that?” he asked, his voice flat. 

“That sometimes, Soul Society miscarries justice. And that when it does, those of us who notice have to take matters into our own hands.” There was a soft rustling as Ukitake set his empty cup down, the hollow clatter of ceramic on wood gentle even in the silence. 

“Yoruichi told you what I am?”

There was a short pause. “Yes.”

Uryū looked up. Ukitake’s expression hadn’t changed, but he tilted his head just a fraction, a thick strand of hair falling over his nose. “And you’re willing to work with me anyway?”

The captain dipped his chin. “Of course I am.”

As though it were that simple. Perhaps, for now, it was. “This realization of ours… I don’t believe Rukia-san thinks the same way.”

Ukitake sighed, the sound nearly imperceptibly soft, the left side of his smile inching higher. “No, I expect she doesn’t. But Rukia is young, Ishida-san. I think we can forgive her for that, don’t you?”

Uryū’s brows descended heavily over his eyes. “It isn’t a matter of forgiving her or not. She hasn’t done anything that needs forgiveness.”

“Oh no? Well, if you think so, then that’s good. But I wonder if that’s how you really feel about it.” Ukitake picked up the teapot, pouring himself a little more, but before Uryū could formulate his response to that, the door to the captain’s office slid open, admitting Yoruichi. Behind her followed Kyōraku and Isshin, neither looking any the worse for wear, and Kyōraku’s fukutaicho. 

“Well, well; looks like the gang’s all here.” Kyōraku smiled, settling himself onto a cushion beside Ukitake. “Shall we plan ourselves some treason?”

* * *

“So, what’s the situation out there? I heard quite the commotion this morning.” Yoruichi sat with crossed legs, leaning back against one of the walls of Ukitake’s office. 

The man himself grimaced, taking in a breath to explain before it was interrupted by a hacking cough. Uryū started in surprise, but none of the others seemed unprepared, not even when it continued that way for half a minute straight before it finally calmed. Hanatarō had made it to his knees, and looked to Kyōraku, as if for some signal about what to do, but Ukitake himself waved a hand, rubbing at the shihakusho over his chest with a frown. His hand was flecked with blood. 

“I’m fine,” he said, straightening back up, and slowly, Hanatarō sank back into his seiza. Ukitake smiled mildly, but the expression was quickly replaced by one much more solemn. “Earlier today, we were all sent a message—it seems that sometime last night or just after dawn, Aizen-taicho of the Fifth was murdered. His body was found staked high on one of the Seireitei’s towers.”

“And now all the younger officers are running around without an ounce of thoughtfulness, accusing each other of being responsible, or throwing one another in prison cells. I’ve felt more zanpakutō releases within the last twenty-four hours in here than the last century, excluding training.” Kyōraku sighed, tipping his hat back and glancing at Uryū out of the corner of his eye. 

“And that’s not even counting what happened to Abarai.” He raised a brow, but nothing in either his expression or his body language read as aggression to Uryū. 

“So it’s chaos.” Uryū resisted the urge to scoff. 

“Mm, in a way. But it’s a little convenient, don’t you think? That all of this is happening at the same time?” 

“It makes sense to me,” Uryū replied. “Whoever killed this Aizen-taicho has an easy scapegoat in the three of us.” He indicated himself, Yoruichi, and Isshin. 

“You’re quite right,” Ukitake put in, “but I think Shunsui means even more than that. Not only is it timed very conveniently with your appearance, but also with Rukia’s execution.” He looked on the verge of saying more, but raised his tea to his mouth a little too quickly, so Kyōraku took over the explanation again. 

“The date’s been moved up again: it’s tomorrow morning, now. First thing.” Uryū’s eyes widened, his hands closing into fists on his knees. 

“Again? Who wants her to die so badly that they keep doing this?” He squeezed, and his knuckles whitened. 

“It’s not just that, either.” Isshin rubbed at his beard, his eyes distant. “Unless they’ve started using the Sōkyoku to execute just anyone recently, the penalty doesn’t make sense. The punishment inflicted by _that_ isn’t just death: it’s a complete incineration of the soul.” He blinked, and his eyes met Uryū’s. “You already know how much we fear that kind of destruction. The Sōkyoku has never been used on anyone below the level of captain, and never for anything but the most unforgivable crimes.” He shuddered. “Desertion doesn’t remotely qualify, and I don’t buy this treason thing they’re telling the lower seats.”

The others nodded solemnly. “It seems that the only thing to conclude is that someone is manipulating events to an end we can’t see,” Ukitake said softly. “But I don’t know how. The decisions about Rukia’s case have all been handed down directly from Central 46. Even when I asked for a hearing about it, they refused almost immediately.”

“Then someone is manipulating this Central 46,” Uryū said, lifting his shoulders. “Is it really so hard to believe?”

“Yes,” Ukitake replied, “but perhaps it should not be.”

“In any case, letting things proceed as they’re going will only play right into that person’s hands, whoever they are. We can’t do anything about the Central 46, and I suspect that figuring out the Aizen situation will take more time than we have, so our only option is to stop the execution.” Kyōraku looked down at his tea, blinked, and set it aside, pulling a jug of sake from his sash. 

“Before or during?” Yoruichi inquired.

“Definitely during,” Kyōraku said, pouring the sake into a dish Uryū hadn’t seen him retrieve. “It’s a bit of extra risk, but the advantage is that everyone we need to worry about dealing with will be there at the same time.”

Yoruichi tilted her head, pursing her lips, but then she smiled. “Not the way I’d do it, but I see the merits.”

Lifting his massive shoulders into a shrug, Kyōraku spared her a glance. “Well, I’m sure your talents will be useful all the same, Yoruichi-san. After all, none of you can just walk up the Sōkyoku Hill in plain sight like we can. In fact, the element of surprise is going to be pretty important.”

“Oh yeah?” Yoruichi asked, her smile growing. “I’m listening.”

* * *

Rukia shuddered. She couldn’t believe Ichimaru could affect her like that. She’d been at peace with her decision, content in the knowledge that she had people in her life who would try to save her, resolved to beg for mercy to be given them, and then resign herself to her fate. But with nothing more than a few words, he’d shaken her to her core. 

_Shall I save you_?

Was her resolve truly so weak as that? Did she, somewhere at the core of herself, really wish to be saved so much that she considered, even for an instant, believing that Ichimaru would do it, just like that? 

One of the Kidō Corps members escorting her tugged slightly on her collar, and Rukia stumbled forward before regaining her stride. Well, it was of no use now, anyway. She straightened, falling back into step with the guards, and stood passively on the platform of the Sōkyoku when they left her there, removing her leads but for the moment keeping her hands tied. 

Looking around, she saw a few of the captains and vice captains—Kyōraku and Nanao were there, as were Unohana and Isane, Suì-Fēng and Ōmaeda, and of course Yamamoto and Sasakibe. As the moment approached, Komamura came up the hill as well, taking a spot next to Unohana. Sentaro and Kiyone were there, but she noted Ukitake-taicho’s absence. She hoped his illness was not the reason. He’d never deserved that suffering.

Rukia tipped her head up, taking in the massive, halberd-like blade that was to take her life. She didn’t understand much about how the Sōkyoku worked; she’d never known it to be used in her tenure as a member of the Gotei 13. But it was certainly something to look at, especially from this angle. Sunlight gleamed from the blade, rigid atop the massive pole. Behind it, a few fluffy-looking clouds drifted past, a breeze stirring the paper talisman tied at the base of its cutting edge. 

She lowered her eyes from the sky, only to suck in a sharp breath. Byakuya was here. For a moment, she thought he might say something to her, or acknowledge her in some way, but his eyes remained firmly averted as he took a place at the end of the line, and Rukia huffed softly under her breath. No, of course not. He was simply doing his duty by being here, just as she was doing hers by submitting to her own demise. 

She closed her eyes for a moment, lowering her head, a small smile touching her mouth at the edges before she let it fall away. It was enough. 

A heavy thud drew her attention, the Sōtaicho’s staff sounding a thunderous rapport against the platform. “Rukia Kuchiki,” he intoned, “for crimes against Soul Society, the Central 46 have sentenced you to death. Do you have any last words?”

The weight of his gaze was a palpable thing. It felt harder to breathe even just looking at him, and she wasn’t making direct eye contact. Somehow, she knew that she couldn’t. Filling her lungs with a breath, Rukia nodded slightly. “Yes.”

Her mouth was dry. Darting her tongue out, she wet her lips so she could speak clearly, pronouncing each of her words slowly. “The ryoka that are here to rescue me… will you please show them mercy? They share no blame for my crimes.” 

_He doesn’t deserve to die for this_.

A moment passed, the faint breeze picking up a few strands of Rukia’s hair, slightly sticky with sweat, and the Sōtaicho inclined his head. “It will be done.” 

A wave of relief, gentle and warm like a summer ocean’s tide, swelled in Rukia’s chest and washed over her skin. She felt her muscles relax, until just then unaware they had even been tense. “Thank you.” 

The members of the Kidō Corps unbound her hands, and three square blocks on the platform illuminated, one right in front of her bare toes and the others to either side of her feet. She offered no resistance as they melded out of the floor, the ones on the sides snapping up to the level of her shoulders, carrying her arms with them. The other shifted until it was beneath her feet, and she felt herself being lifted, up towards the horizontal bar near the top of the Sōkyoku stand. The sounds from ground level faded away, and all she could hear was the gentle rush of air around her and the sound of her own heartbeat—slow, steady, calm. 

She ascended, tilting her head up. It was as close as she would ever come to the sky itself, and she felt strangely glad that this was how it was to happen. If she kept herself like this, that sky would be the last thing she ever saw. The blue backdrop, the white clouds, and the bright, bright sun overhead. 

A massive shift in reiatsu beneath her signaled the unsealing of the Sōkyoku, but Rukia kept her gaze on the sky, seeking the radiance of the sun, staring into it for as long as she could, and then, when the light became unbearable, she closed her eyes, the afterimage floating in front of her even as the dull roar of the Sōkyoku’s flames overcame the sound of the wind and her heart, filling her hearing, and the heat seared against her every pore. 

This was it. 

_I’m ready_. 

She heard a cry, like what she imagined a massive bird might sound like, a trilling call that was half music, half righteous ire, and released her last breath. 

A second passed, and then another, and then a third, and suddenly the heat was receding. Uncomprehending, Rukia opened her eyes, gasping when she saw what was before her. 

It wasn’t for the fact that the Sōkyoku’s true form resembled a firebird, nor its size or ferocity. Rather, it was for the fact that it was being restrained by something. She followed the line of its bonds in time to see Ukitake-taicho thrust his zanpakutō through the end of one of the ropes, Kyōraku on the other side doing the same. 

Most of the others present wore open expressions of shock, and were slow to react, but Byakuya moved quicker, looking up to where she was suspended. It was hard to see from where she was, but it might have been shock that passed over his face then. She couldn’t tell why, until—

“Didn’t I tell you that your death should mean something?” Before she could so much as formulate a response, two flashes of blue light broke the kidō binding her hands in place, and she wobbled awkwardly on her foothold. A hand steadied her with a grip on the back of her yukata, the fabric of a glove rasping slightly over the skin at her nape, and she half-turned on the spot. 

“ _Ishida_ ,” she breathed. 

He wore a shinigami’s shihakusho, save that his white gloves with the blue cross patterns were much the same as she remembered, and a black cloak of some kind, tattered at the ends, was thrown over his shoulders, pinned in place with a silver five-pointed cross on the left side. He gave her half a wry smile, sunlight glinting off the edge of his glasses for a moment. 

“Your brother’s giving me a death glare right now, you know.” Rukia could believe it, but she turned anyway, to find that Byakuya was, indeed, displaying more overt anger than she’d ever seen on him, his mouth twisted down into an open scowl. 

“I’d apologize for this, but given the trouble you’ve caused me, I don’t think I’m actually that sorry,” Ishida continued, and before she could ask exactly what he meant by that, he raised his voice, calling down to the ground level. 

“Renji! Now!” His grip on her shifted, and Ishida gave her a firm shove, forcing her off the platform block she’d been balanced on. 

Rukia yelped, windmilling her arms and hurtling headlong for the ground, her time in the sekkiseki prison having prevented her from accumulating nearly enough reiryoku to even slow her fall. Apparently as planned, however, she landed in a pair of arms before she had to worry about impact with the platform, and clutched tightly to the front of Renji’s shihakusho as he bounded several times in quick succession, attempting to get them both clear of the confrontation beginning to boil over on the Sōkyoku Hill. 

When Byakuya suddenly appeared in their path, she knew they weren’t going to make it, except that a barrage of blue projectiles forced him to the left, and Renji went right. “Renji! Put me down right now! You can’t do this, you’ll be—”

“Shut it, Rukia!” he replied, and her mouth snapped closed, more, she thought, from surprise than anything. “We’re getting you out of here whether you like it or not.”

“But—” Any clemency she might have given them with her request to the Sōtaicho was surely useless now, but perhaps if they turned around… 

“This isn’t just about you, Rukia. And even if it were, we’d still be saving you, okay? You made your choice, and this is ours. So deal with it.”

She found she didn’t have the energy to argue anymore. So she leaned into his hold, placing the side of her head against his chest, and nodded mutely.

* * *

Around him, there was sheer chaos. Thankfully, it was organized in their favor, in truth. At first opportunity, Kyōraku, Ukitake, and Nanao had used _shunpō_ to get themselves away from the rest of the fight, and equally fortunately, Yamamoto had taken the bait and followed them. Isshin was in the process of knocking out the vice-captains present, and Yoruichi had already bodily tackled the short captain with the cloth-wrapped braids. 

That left Unohana, the man in the massive helmet—Komamura, possibly—and Byakuya Kuchiki, who was still definitely intent on murdering him. 

Uryū did not consider himself the kind of person who usually desired to kill his enemies, but he might be willing to make an exception himself, here. The captain flashed towards him, swinging his sword down with such speed it was almost impossible to track. It clanged off Ginrei Kojaku while Uryū drew a Seele Scheider with his other hand. 

From the corner of his eye, he could see Isshin moving to engage Komamura, and Unohana releasing her zanpakutō. He didn’t have time to focus on that, though—Byakuya demanded all of his attention, and if he didn’t give it, he was going to die here. 

“Coming here was a mistake,” Kuchiki informed him flatly, shifting his grip on his katana. Uryū had asked Yoruichi a lot of questions about that zanpakutō, so he had some idea what he was eventually in for. 

“Is that so? Because it’s not regret I’m feeling right now,” Uryū replied, letting his bow dissolve for the moment and taking a doublehand grip on the Schneider, manifesting the blade and extending it slightly longer than usual, so that it was roughly the size of Senbonzakura’s sealed form. No point in giving a man like Kuchiki even an extra inch of reach, because he’d know exactly how to use it. 

Isshin and Komamura flashed away, and a large green creature took off from the precipice nearby, Unohana and her fukutaicho astride. The rest of the reiatsu remaining in the area went with them, leaving himself and Kuchiki alone on the hill. 

“Then you are a fool.”

Uryū’s lip curled. “So I’ve been told.”

Kuchiki seemed disinclined to move first. It wasn’t Uryū’s preference to begin an exchange, either, but at least this way, he would know when it started. His fingers flexed on his Seele Schneider’s hilt, and he lunged.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Term Dictionary_ :
> 
>  _Sōkyoku_ – 双殛 – “Twinned punishment.” There’s no particular canon reason for it to be called this, I think, but it _is_ canon that it completely incinerates a soul, so I had Isshin kind of allude to the fact that it’s considered a twofold punishment because it not only kills a person, but also obliterates the soul entirely. Supposedly it has the power of a million zanpakutō, but I find that claim weird, considering how easily Kyōraku and Ukitake were able to not just block it, but destroy it completely. Of course, they might also just be that badass, or the shield is that badass, but in any case it doesn’t really matter for present purposes.
> 
> * * *
> 
> So, yeah, Uryū’s more stealth, guile, and planning than Ichigo was, and I felt that given the difference in the timelines between this and canon, it was pretty probable that people who were planning on stopping the execution anyway would work together. Isshin’s involvement definitely helped, of course. Renji was recruited as well, but that happened kind of on the way, after he broke out of prison. 
> 
> It’s worth noting that Renji and Byakuya’s fight did _not_ happen here, and Renji didn’t have enough time to do his bankai training, so he has not technically obtained it yet. He will though; I really like Renji and think he doesn’t get enough credit as a rule.
> 
> Also, I haven’t been showing any of it, but most of the Momo/Izuru/Tōshiro/Gin/Matsumoto shitstorm has been happening as it does in canon, since none of that is really dependent on the identities of the ryoka. Mayuri is off somewhere giving zero flying you-know-whats about all of this, and Kenpachi has been (unsuccessfully) searching for the ryoka since they got there. With Yoruichi and other captains/former captains for guidance, as well as a functional ability to sense reiatsu, Uryū would not have had much trouble avoiding him. Komamura was at the execution because he didn’t get sidetracked helping Tōsen fight Kenpachi, since Kenpachi is still trying to _find_ the action, rather than being in the middle of it.
> 
> * * *
> 
> Next time: Byakuya and Uryū throw down, some information from Lesson Two probably becomes relevant, and Aizen and co. reveal themselves!


	9. Consume

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Consume: _transitive verb_ , \kən-ˈsüm\
> 
> 1\. to do away with completely  
> 2\. to enjoy avidly  
> 3\. to engage fully

_Lesson Two is pretty simple, really. Just sit down over there, close your eyes, and meditate for a while._

_You can’t be serious._

_On the contrary, Ishida-kun, I’ve never been more serious in my entire life. You’re only grasping a fraction of your power. To win in the Soul Society, you’re going to have to do a lot more than that._

* * *

“ _Chire, Senbonzakura_.”

Uryū took a quick jump backwards in preparation for the release, and the sword in Kuchiki’s hand dissolved at the blade into thousands of tiny projectiles. Each, Yoruichi had explained, was a tiny razor edge of its own, but the real danger in them was the way they could move, _en masse_ , directed by nothing but the wielder’s will. The light reflecting from each of the blades was supposedly the only thing that even made them visible, and each did indeed possess some kind of near-luminous pinkish tinge to it. 

A mass of them rushed towards him, almost more liquid than solid in formation, and Uryū slipped into _hirenkyaku_ , taking several steps in quick succession to avoid them. The blades were quick to redirect—much quicker than Renji’s shikai had been, and Uryū strained the limits of his speed to stay ahead of them. 

Still, for the moment he could do it, and so he wasted little time, changing altitude and direction as rapidly as his ability would allow, manifesting Ginrei Kojaku again and keeping up a steady barrage of arrows. He could fire perhaps a thousand at once, but for now, he kept it to a handful at a time, prodding at Kuchiki’s defenses carefully. He didn’t have a lot of time to figure out the ability; Yoruichi had only been able to give him the basics, and any vulnerabilities in the defense the blades provided was something he would have to discover on his own. 

The tide of petal-blades split, one strand of it forming into a dome above Kuchiki to fend off the latest volley, while the other shot straight for Uryū. Flashing upwards, he pulled in a breath, drawing back the Seele Schneider in his left hand. The cool metal, warmed by the heat of his hand, brushed for just a moment over his cheek as he aimed, and then released with the exhale. 

The arrow burned with a fierce blue light, scattering the strand of Kuchiki’s shikai surging towards him, and then crashing into the shield over his head with a sound like dull thunder. The explosion kicked up a massive cloud of dust, and Uryū grimaced, pushing off a small platform of reishi under his foot and flipping himself over and back, feet over head, eyes locked on where he still felt Kuchiki’s reiatsu. 

“Too slow.”

The words were the only warning he had—Kuchiki was right behind him, Uryū’s reiatsu sense only at that moment registering the motion. A heavy elbow landed on his spine, and all of his momentum upwards disappeared. He hurtled for the ground, landing hard enough to crack the dirt and stone around him. His spine, somehow, remained intact. 

_Get up!_

A minute whistling sound alerted him to the incoming blades, and Uryū pushed off the ground with both hands and a blast of raw reishi, propelling himself out of the crater he’d made and to the left, maneuvering his feet back under him with solidified discs of energy. He could feel the warm trickle of blood from his split lower lip, and pain radiated outwards from the place Kuchiki’s _hakuda_ had struck his back. Another few hits like that and he might not have the wherewithal to get up again. 

_Then stop playing around and finish it_. 

Her voice was louder now. She hadn’t interfered in his fight with Renji; he could only assume her presence at this juncture was a reaction to just how thin the line was between life and death here. Uryū exhaled, pulling in more reishi and moving his left hand behind his back. 

His first two fingers found loops in the ends of a pair of Seele Schneiders, and he slid them from the brace at his back. Gritting his teeth, he blinked away from Senbonzakura again and adjusted his grip so that he had a Schneider in either hand, extending both at once. Pausing for half a second to pinpoint Kuchiki’s exact location, Uryū gathered even more reishi under his feet and launched himself directly forward. 

Kuchiki reacted a beat too slowly; Uryū swung one of the Schneiders in a broad arc, releasing a wave of reishi that knocked aside the strand of Senbonzakura’s blades that moved in to attack him. The others went to form a shield, but he’d anticipated that, and slammed into it at full speed, leading with his weapons. 

One clanged off entirely, turned by the densely-packed formation, but the other had made it just in time, and wedged directly between two of the razors as the shield was still forming. He could feel resistance on the other side, more blades likely preventing him from digging it in any further, and the muscles in his arm strained with the effort to keep that half-inch of reishi exactly where it was. 

Uryū’s mouth curled subtly, and he drew back, driving the second Schneider in beside the first, compressing the reishi of each so that both fit in only half the space. Gathering more energy from the air, he shoved it all forward at once, wrenching both arms to either side and tearing apart the shield. 

The blades he touched, just like the ones in the attack wave before, fell to the ground in a burst of soft chiming noises, like the tinkling of hundreds of tiny bells. A rush of displaced air behind him could only mean that Kuchiki had managed to reconnect his reiatsu to the blades, reanimating them, but Uryū had already stepped into his guard. 

The Schneiders hummed as he drove both of them forward, one high and one midway. Kuchiki didn’t bring his zanpakutō’s little blades this close—Uryū had observed that much already. Probably in order not to cut himself, but by the same logic, he shouldn’t be—

Kuchiki turned the lower blade with a _hakuda_ move, deflecting with his open palm. The edge bit into his hand, but missed anything vital by a wide margin. The upper blade skimmed past his brow as he moved his head to the side, leaving a gash at his temple and cracking one of those strange ornaments he wore at the side of his head. It disintegrated, the dust carried off in the breeze. His second hand grasped Uryū’s left wrist, keeping it from moving in again. The hilt of his sword was nowhere to be seen.

“ _Senbonzakura Kageyoshi_.”

To either side of them, dozens of gigantic katana blades rose up from the ground, each one disintegrating into more of the tiny razors. The number was surely beyond counting. Uryū grit his teeth, attempting to use _hirenkyaku_ to get more distance, but Kuchiki’s grip on both his arms held him fast.

Pain blossomed, hundreds of tiny cuts opening in Uryū’s back and along his arms from shoulder to elbow. The entire left sleeve of his shihakusho shredded; the right side hung on by threads. 

“An astute observation,” Kuchiki said, stepping away from Uryū, just outside the reach of the Schneiders. The loss of the hold was sudden, and Uryū lurched forward, falling to a knee. Thin trickles of blood webbed down his back, parting and merging with the contours of his posture, but he found it impossible to differentiate them all. “Within a certain radius of my person, it becomes more difficult to safely employ Senbonzakura. The timing required, and the control, is quite precise. But against an opponent who cannot flee, it is no great challenge.”

Each breath Uryū took felt like it was splitting him further open at the seams; he struggled to focus through the haze. So this was a shinigami’s bankai, then. Perhaps it was to be expected. 

_Giving up already? How pathetic._

* * *

Abruptly, Uryū found himself pulled into his inner world. 

“Honestly. Do I have to do everything for you?” The voice, cold and imperious, belonged to a woman. Of a sort.

Running a hand down the lower half of his face, Uryū sighed, lifting his head and standing. Of course, he wasn’t injured in here. In fact, no time as such was really passing at all, outside. It was such a strange thing, and he couldn’t say he fully grasped how it worked yet, but then, maybe no one did. 

Uryū’s inner world was, he’d discovered, completely white and featureless. It was disconcerting, actually—without any reference, his ability to perceive depth and distance didn’t work well, and the result was a curious sort of flatness, devoid of shadow or perceptible shape. 

She, of course, had no problem walking around as though the ground were perfectly ordinary, but only with great focus could he even keep himself standing for long.

“I’m not giving up, Lucia. I just… have to figure out how I can beat him, is all.”

Lucia sniffed, tossing back her silver-white hair with a sharp head gesture. She was a tall woman, taller than Uryū himself, cloaked from neck to feet in a white so stark it blended perfectly with the background of the inner world. Without the blue Quincy cross on it for reference, she would have appeared to be little more than a floating head, looking down her nose at him with eyes so pale he couldn’t discern what color they were supposed to be. Unless the answer to that, too, was white. 

“You’re thinking of using _that_ , aren’t you?” Her eyes narrowed until her lashes ringed only a sliver of iris. “You know if you do, I’ll sleep. And neither of us can be sure I’ll wake up afterwards.”

Uryū glanced away, picking a random spot of blankness in his inner world and letting his eyes fix on it instead of Lucia. “I’ll find a way to wake you.”

“Hm.” He heard her push a gusty sigh from her lungs. “This opponent. Is beating him really worth it?”

“It’s not about that,” Uryū countered. “It’s about saving her. Saving… my friend.”

“Are you certain?” The question seemed to have two meanings. Uryū dragged his eyes back to Lucia. “We’ve only just met, you know. There is much we have yet to learn together, and if you do this, we might never have the chance. Would you really choose your friend over that?”

He swallowed, tasting bile in the back of his mouth, and lowered his head. “If I were stronger, I wouldn’t have to.”

“Hmph. Don’t be ridiculous. If you were more _powerful_ , you wouldn’t have to. But strength and power are not the same.” Uryū felt a hand on his head, fingers carding gently into his hair. 

“So show me your strength, and I will show you my power.”

* * *

_An inner world is… well, it’s kind of like a pocket dimension, you could say, created instinctively by anyone with the right kind of power. Shinigami think of them as belonging to zanpakutō, because that’s the first time any of them are in contact with it—when they go there to commune with the zanpakutō’s spirit._

_But it would be more accurate to say that such a place is created by both of them: the shinigami and the zanpakutō. In theory, you don’t have to have a zanpakutō at all—just enough power of some kind to form and stabilize the inner world. You already have that power, Ishida-kun, and finding out what lies inside it is the beginning and end of the lesson._

* * *

Uryū braced his hand on his knee, shakily pushing himself back onto his feet. For a moment, the world tilted dangerously, and he almost fell again, but the disorientation passed, and he straightened. Uncountable blades swirled in the air around himself and Kuchiki, and he could not help but think that the effect was oddly hypnotic. Blinking, he refocused, pushing the thought aside.

“Why do you rise? It would have been better for you to stay down.”

Uryū rolled his shoulders. Lucia was certainly doing her part—the bleeding had mostly stopped, though the pain was still there. “Probably.”

“Then I repeat the question: why?”

Uryū adjusted his glasses, knocked askew in his efforts to get away from Kuchiki’s bankai. His free hand reached between the layers at the front of his shihakusho, gripping the sturdy fabric therein. “Shouldn’t I be asking you that? My stubbornness is nothing next to yours. What kind of brother arrests his own sister on suspect charges, then registers not one protest as she’s about to be executed?”

Kuchiki frowned, ever so slightly. “You would not understand.”

Sliding the glove onto his right hand, the one currently without such an accessory, Uryū hummed slightly. “No, I suppose I wouldn’t. But I can guess the words you’d use.” He flexed his fingers in the glove, testing the feel of it. “Duty. Honor. Pride. It’s funny, actually, since those are the same words I’d use, but what they mean is completely different.” 

Extending his right arm out in front of him, Uryū tilted his head slightly to the side. “How about it, Kuchiki-taichō? Should we see which one of us has the right idea?”

The captain raised a hand to the cut on his temple, moving his thumb across it for a moment, then lowering his arm. A drop of blood coalesced on the end of his digit, falling to the ground. 

“ _Senkei_.”

The swirling blades around them merged, forming into hundreds of swords. Each of them moved towards the outside of their immediate vicinity, forming four rings, the largest at the bottom, their radii decreasing towards the top. The sole exception returned to Kuchiki’s right hand, the light of it fading until it resembled his sealed shikai. Uryū could sense a difference in pressure, however, and knew that the reiatsu contained within it was much greater. 

_I am ready._

With a deep breath, Uryū took the spike on the wrist of the Sanrei glove and snapped it. The piece of metal fell away, and he felt a surge in power, unlike anything he’d ever imagined. It was like a barrier between him and the world around him had burst, flooding him with reishi from his surroundings at a rate that would have been terrifying, if he hadn’t known it was going to happen. 

Kuchiki rushed towards him, but it seemed to Uryū as though he were moving through water, and it was simple to get out of the way of the hit, even considering the weight of the new armor he seemed to have acquired. 

_Any other surprises, Lucia?_

_Draw your sword_ , he heard in response, the command echoing in his mind. Reaching back, Uryū slid out the last of his Seele Schneider blades, and the result was instantaneous—the light flared bright enough to almost blind him, and he saw spots in his vision even after averting his eyes. 

_You must compress it_.

Reining in the reishi, Uryū forced it into a more compact shape, but the edges of it were unsteady, sputtering as they almost _fought_ to be free of his control. Around him, the very environment was beginning to dissolve, starting with the most concentrated reishi-composed object in the area: the Sōkyoku’s stand. Fragments broke off of it and drifted towards him, gathering at his back, though he didn’t waste the time figuring out why. It was useful to have there, and that was enough. 

When he rushed forward, he _knew_ his _hirenkyaku_ was faster. He landed behind Kuchiki, who only just managed to turn in time to raise his sword to block. Uryū brought down the Seele Schneider doublehanded, and the blade in his opponent’s hand burst and disappeared, unmade at the particle level. Before Kuchiki could step into _shunpō_ , Uryū slashed a second time, leaving a broad slice across his chest. 

Adapting his strategy with admirable speed, Kuchiki put some distance between them, and the blades caging them in started to coalesce further, condensing down into a single sword. “ _Shūkei: Hakuteiken_.”

Reiatsu concentrated at Kuchiki’s back, taking on a form not unlike the wings of a bird, the energy mostly white now, only barely tinged with the pinkish hue of sakura. The single blade glowed a bright white as well, and for a moment, Uryū was struck by the similarity of the techniques: both compressed a large amount of energy into a small space, and both expelled so much energy that the extra was manifested elsewhere. 

They faced each other for a tense moment, neither moving a centimeter, and Uryū searched Kuchiki’s posture for any indications that he was going to move, trying to give none himself. His eyes narrowed—there. A shift in Kuchiki’s stance, and they were both off like bolts of lightning, unmistakably on a collision course. 

Their blades met, the shockwave from the impact leveling the rest of the Sōkyoku’s stand and flattening out the grass beneath their feet, though it was entirely soundless. Uryū landed at the other end of the charge, his back to Kuchiki, the Seele Schneider’s high-frequency hum the only sound in his hearing for a distended moment.

He flinched when a cut opened up at his shoulder, shattering the armor protecting the area, blood soaking into his remaining sleeve. 

Uryū heard the fluttering of heavy fabric, and then a thud. Turning, he laid eyes on Kuchiki in just enough time to see Senbonzakura shudder, breaking into its multiple little blades, all but one of which themselves dissolved in motes of light. Kuchiki snatched the last out of the air with bloody fingers. 

When Uryū approached, he forced himself to his feet, swaying precariously before he found his balance. “It seems,” he said quietly, between heavy breaths, “that you have beaten me. I yield; I shall pursue Rukia no further.”

Uryū nodded, and declined to give chase when Kuchiki moved into _shunpō_. He could feel himself losing connection with Lucia, and the reishi collected at his back started to evaporate. It left a dull throb in his chest, in time with but distinct from his heartbeat, and he almost checked to see if Kuchiki hadn’t managed to disembowel him after all. But it wasn’t that kind of pain, not really. 

_Until next time…_

The connection faded like dust in the wind, and for a long moment, Uryū had to exert all the willpower he had not to cave in on himself. He’d won, there was no mistaking that. He’d fought everything about Soul Society, about shinigami, that he hated most, and he’d won. In doing so, he may well have turned aside Rukia’s most dogged pursuer. 

But for that one second, it felt like the wrong decision, for what he’d given up. For how alone he was.

Pulling in a breath, Uryū shook his head. He needed to find Hanatarō, and then follow Renji and Rukia. He could still sense them, at least. 

He turned, and left the Sōkyoku Hill behind.

* * *

The rhythm of Renji’s feet against the ground was steady, jolting Rukia only minimally with each impact. She barely even felt their motion, truth be told—it wasn’t so unlike floating. She wondered what the plan was, where they thought they could take her that no one would find her in the end. 

“I can’t believe so many people helped,” she murmured, turning her head to look up. Renji faced straight ahead still, but he saw his mouth turn down. The edges of his tattoos were so sharp and precise; she’d never thought about it before, but he must go to a real artist to have them expanded. It was an odd thing to notice now, but perhaps with her face in such proximity to his neck, it was inevitable.

“Yeah, I don’t really get it either, to be honest,” he muttered, shaking his head as they started down a staircase, expanding the distance between each bump by a half-second. “They didn’t exactly have time to explain it all on the way. Ishida… I have no idea if that kid is here for you, or just to give the middle finger to the whole of Soul Society.”

A smile touched the corners of Rukia’s mouth, and she leaned a little further into him, pressing her cheek to his shihakusho. “He can multitask—it’s probably both, though I’d be surprised if he admitted it.”

Renji grunted softly, an acknowledgement in his language. “The others… well, you know Ukitake-taichō cares. I couldn’t get a sense of what the rest of them were after, though. Guess I didn’t really need to know.”

“Hm.” Rukia’s eyes fell half-closed, lulled by the steady movement and her own fatigue both. 

They’d reached the bottom of the stairs before Renji spoke again. “I was going to fight Byakuya, you know. They found me on my way to stop him from making it to the execution. I didn’t have any idea what to do besides that. I just thought… somehow, if I could stop him, there might be a chance.”

Her fingers tightened in his kosode. “Thank you, Renji.”

He glanced down for just a moment. “It’s no problem, Rukia.”

They approached the division barracks quickly, Renji angling to slot himself into one of the streets between the Seventh and the Eighth. They were about halfway through when Rukia sensed a sudden shift in reiatsu, and Renji drew to a stop. Facing forward, she saw what he did. 

“Tōsen-taichō? What are you doing here?” 

Kaname Tōsen said nothing in response, instead adjusting his stance slightly, withdrawing what looked like a long length of fabric from his uniform. With a sharp gesture, the cloth spread out in a broad circle around them. 

“What the—?” Renji tried to jump out, but before he could, they were completely enveloped, and Rukia felt a strange _pulling_ sensation. Renji’s grip tightened around her legs and shoulders, and she shifted to wind her closer arm around his back, gripping the back of his uniform in her fist when her arm didn’t make it all the way around. 

When the fabric fell away again, Renji’s eyes went wide, and Rukia gasped. This was… it could only be Sōkyoku Hill. The terrain was different, the stand of the object now destroyed along with the weapon, and the side of the hill was marred with pockmark holes and at least one large crater, but she would recognize the view no matter what else changed about it. 

“How…?” she murmured.

“Abarai-kun.” Renji turned, and Rukia therefore turned with him. With their reiatsu concealed, she hadn’t even noticed their presence, but Aizen-taichō and Ichimaru were both there, a mild smile on Aizen’s face. But wait—that cry she’d heard the morning before—wasn’t that…?

“Put down Rukia Kuchiki, and step aside.” Renji’s whole body went rigid; she could feel the way his muscles tightened without really moving. Rukia swallowed.

“I refuse,” he replied through gritted teeth. 

Aizen let out a breath that might have been a sigh. “Well, I suppose I can understand how you feel. Very well, you can continue to hold onto her if you wish. Just leave your arms behind.” Behind his glasses, Aizen’s eyes narrowed, and that was all the warning they had. 

Renji jumped back. Rukia felt the rush of air go by as Aizen’s sword lashed for them, much too fast for her to see, and a massive gash opened in Renji’s shoulder. He dropped the arm holding her legs and drew Zabimaru anyway. For a second, he cocked his head, as if listening to something she could not hear, and then his mouth twisted into a snarl. “You,” he hissed. “You killed Momo?!”

“Ah, so they’ve finally spread the word, I see.” Aizen lifted a shoulder, flicking Renji’s blood off his zanpakutō with a sharp motion in his wrist. It spattered on the ground several feet away, and Rukia knew already that unless someone else made it here, neither of them was leaving alive. But if they could just buy enough time…

Renji’s sword was steady in his hand. Should she…?

“Don’t even think about it, Rukia,” he muttered under his breath, so only she could hear, and she let out the breath she’d been about to use to try a conditional surrender. Instead, she started pulling together what little reiryoku she’d been able to regain since her return to Soul Society—the sekkiseki prison had not made it easy, but she wished now that she’d tried a little harder anyway. 

Aizen was studying the both of them dispassionately; Rukia had the uncanny intuition that he knew exactly what they were thinking and wasn’t concerned at all. Neither of his subordinates had moved even an inch. 

“ _Hoero, Zabimaru_!” Renji released his zanpakutō, swinging it directly for Aizen, who smiled, but did not move. Three feet from impact, Zabimaru suddenly _stopped_ , as though it had met some invisible barrier, but Aizen had cast no kidō. 

Rukia drew up all the reiryoku she had as Renji grappled with whatever kept Zabimaru from striking, speaking the words she needed under her breath in hopes of using his attack as a screen for her own. “Disintegrate, you black dog of Rodanini. Look upon yourself with horror and tear out your own throat. _Bakudō #9: Hōrin_!”

Zabimaru moved aside with perfect timing, concealing the approach of the golden whip of light until the last possible second. It moved in towards Aizen, bypassing the three-foot radius, and then—

—it fizzled out in midair, as though she’d never cast it at all. The same flare in Aizen’s reiatsu burst Zabimaru at the joints, sending his parts scattering everywhere in slivers. The captain sighed. “It really is difficult. Stepping on an ant without crushing it.”

Ruki neither saw nor felt him move. It was as if, spontaneously, another, larger wound just appeared on Renji, a spray of blood forming at his previously-uninjured shoulder, the severed muscle no longer able to support her weight. But before she so much as hit the ground, she was lifted, suspended in the air by the collar around her neck, and the two fingers Aizen had slipped underneath it. He held her at arms’ length, still wearing a disconcerting, easy smile. A heavy thud behind her signaled Renji’s collapse.

“What—what are you…?”

Aizen shook his head slightly. “You really don’t get it, do you? Let me spell it out for you, Rukia Kuchiki. Your problems, every single one, are the fault of Kisuke Urahara.”

Rukia brought both hands up to his wrist, trying to alleviate the pressure on her neck, her feet swinging uselessly in the air. Urahara? “W-what?” 

“I would say it’s quite simple, but for the likes of you it probably isn’t. I’ll try to use small words, so you can understand. All shinigami are limited. We can refine our arts all we like, but there comes a point where we simply hit the outer bounds of what our forms are capable of. We are intrinsically restrained by the capacities of our bodies to contain reiryoku. There are few ways to reach transcendent power, but one of them is available to shinigami, courtesy of that man, Kisuke Urahara.” He tilted his head at her, a strand of hair brushing his nose. Rukia fought to pull in another breath while he used his free hand to reach into his uniform. 

“I won’t explain what it is—it won’t really matter to you in a few minutes anyway. But the important part is, during his time in Soul Society, Urahara-san invented something called a Hōgyoku, which was capable of bestowing power beyond the usual bounds of possibility. Urahara-san attempted to destroy it, but that proved impossible by ordinary means. So instead, he needed a place to hide it. And that place… was you.” He withdrew a small object, silver in color, roughly the size of Rukia’s first two fingers. 

“He designed a gigai that would implant this object in your soul, slowly draining you of your reiryoku in order to force the Hōgyoku, and you, into dormancy and undetectability. Had I been any slower in killing the Central 46 and sending your brother and Abarai-kun here to arrest you, he may well have even succeeded.” It was hard to place, but to Rukia, Aizen’s voice sounded almost… wistful? Appreciative? She couldn’t make sense of it.

The object in his hand began to glow. “By the time I realized exactly what he’d done, the Hōgyoku was already fully bonded to your soul, which means there were only two ways to extract it. One was with heat so extreme it would incinerate the rest of your soul, and so I commanded that your execution take place via Sōkyoku. When your friends interfered, I had to resort to the second.” He held up the glowing object. 

“I really must thank them for being such marvelous distractions. Especially the Quincy—hearing that one of _those_ was loose in the Seireitei made even the murder of a captain seem unimportant by comparison, and we were able to move quite freely.” Rukia renewed her struggling, knowing how useless it was, as Aizen brought the object closer to her chest. 

Looking down, she could see a hole starting to form in her sternum. She tried to summon a kidō, dig her nails into his hand, anything, but Aizen was just as impervious to such mundane damage as he had been to Zabimaru. Her eyes rounded as her skin rippled away to expose a small, spherical object, sitting right against her bone. It was dark, almost smoky in color, encased in a layer of something transparent. 

Aizen grasped it, yanking it from her, and it felt like something snapping in the back of her mind. He dropped her without a second glance, turning the object over in his hands. “Almost time, I think,” he said, and Ichimaru folded his hands into his sleeves, the first movement he’d made in the entire time they’d been here. 

Rukia took in a shuddering breath, and Aizen raised a brow, glancing down at her from the corner of his eye. “It doesn’t even kill the host? How… humane.” 

He made a small gesture with his head, clearly to Ichimaru, who stepped forward. “ _Ikorose, Shinsō_.” 

Rukia scarcely had time to brace for the impact as the blade shot towards her. Closing her eyes, she drew her knees up to her chest and flinched as she heard the zanpakutō hit flesh, but after several seconds, she realized she felt no pain. Blinking her eyes back open, she saw her brother in front of her, Shinsō’s point embedded in his shoulder and his right hand closed over the blade further up. Blood dripped from both points of contact, but the only indication Byakuya gave of pain was the tightness around his eyes. 

“Nii-sama?”

Her breath caught in her throat. Never, never would she have expected—

“Don’t. Move.” The command was directed at Aizen, and Rukia rose to her knees, steadying her brother as Shinsō slowly withdrew. He swayed unsteadily, and she gripped him carefully by his shoulders, mindful of the wound. Her eyes flicked to the scene before them: Yoruichi, who had spoken, and Suì-Fēng-taichō both had limbs within inches of Aizen, whose expression nevertheless had not changed. Rangiku held her zanpakutō to Ichimaru’s throat, and Kyōraku-taichō’s sealed katana rested almost jauntily on Tōsen’s left shoulder, his other hand at the brim of his hat. 

Slightly away from the others stood both Ukitake-taichō and Ishida, whose shihakusho had clearly seen better days. Komamura was on the other side, beside the Sōtaicho. 

“It seems it’s finally time to go,” Aizen said, and the sky above them split in time with his words. Rukia had seen something like it only once before, when the Menos Grande landed in Karakura town. But even that was a drop in a pond compared to this. She could see half a dozen Gillian masks, more as the garganta tore wider. 

A beam of light descended from the gate, forcing everyone to jump away from the three traitors. Rukia felt a lump rise in her throat, her hands on Byakuya’s shoulders started to shake. This… this was…

Komamura was yelling at Tōsen, it sounded like, but Rukia’s attention was fixed on Aizen. Ukitake-taichō stepped forward, eyes narrow. “What are you trying to do, Aizen?”

“To go higher,” Aizen replied, as though it were the simplest thing in the world.

“And you’d stoop to this to do it?”

“Don’t be arrogant, Ukitake. No one starts at the top of the world. Not you, not me, not even gods.” His eyes flicked for a moment to Ishida of all people, and his expression dropped into a thoughtful frown. “And yet… impossible things happen more often than you’d believe. I, too, intend to rise above such notions of possibility. The unbearable vacancy of the throne in the sky is over. Because from now on, _I_ will be sitting in it.” 

The light from the garganta swallowed him, and then all three of them were gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Term Dictionary_ :
> 
>  _Senbonzakura_ –千本桜 – “Thousand Cherry Blossoms.” Byakuya’s zanpakutō. The release command is _chire_ (散れ), “scatter.”
> 
>  _Senbonzakura Kageyoshi_ –千本桜景厳 – “Thousand Cherry Blossoms, Vibrant Display.” Byakuya’s bankai. It can use several techniques, some of them involving reducing the number of blades and increasing the power of each by a corresponding margin. These include _Senkei_ (殲景), meaning “slaughterscape,” which is the one where he fences people in with swords, and _Shūkei: Hakuteiken_ (終景: 白帝剣), or “Endscape: White Emperor Sword,” which condenses them into a single blade and turns his reiatsu white. This technique also causes wings of sorts to form at Byakuya’s back, which can be used to fly. The utility of that is limited, considering how good he already is at _shunpō_ , but at least they look cool, I guess.
> 
>  _Lucia_ –流其上 (Ru-shi-a)– “The Exile Herself, Elevated” or “The Self-Risen Exile.” Lucia is also the German version of a name meaning “bearer of light.” This is the name of the inner manifestation of Uryū’s Quincy power. Unlike the original Zangetsu, however, she doesn’t attempt to present herself as anything else, so Uryū knows this. I expanded the explanation of Inner Worlds with some headcanons, because we don’t ever see the Inner World of any Quincy but Ichigo, who is obviously not a typical case. But the way it works in my AU at least is that anyone with sufficient spiritual power has an inner world. And Quincy and Hollow abilities, as well as zanpakutō, manifest therein.
> 
>  _Sanrei Shūto/Glove_ –散霊手套 – “Spirit-Scattering Hand Envelope.” A particular training device used by Quincy to enhance their ability to collect reishi from the environment. It also has a one-time use special ability, called _Quincy: Letzt Stil_ (滅却師最終形態), literally “Destruction Sage: Final Form”, which is what Uryū uses against Byakuya in this chapter. The downside to the technique is that once it is used, the user’s Quincy powers, the ability to collect and use reishi, are sealed off.
> 
>  _Zabimaru_ –蛇尾丸 – “Snake Tail.” Renji’s zanpakutō. The release command is _hoero_ (咆えろ), “howl.”
> 
>  _Bakudō #9: Hōrin_ –縛道#9:崩輪 – “Way of Binding, Number Nine: Disintegrating Circle.” A Kidō spell that generates a yellowish tendril, which ensnares and immobilizes the opponent as it wraps around their body. The end of it remains in the hands of the practitioner, allowing them to control the path of the tendril before and after capture.
> 
>  _Hōgyoku_ –崩玉 – “Crumbling Orb.” MacGuffin of the decade, basically, though it certainly has plenty of uses, many of which will be important later, as in canon.
> 
>  _Shinsō_ –神鎗 – “God-Spear.” This is the name of Gin’s zanpakutō. Its release command is _ikorose_ (射殺せ), which means “shoot to kill.”
> 
> * * *
> 
> So there’s that. One more chapter in this installment, and then we slow the action way down for the sequel to do some character development and canon divergence like whoa. Sequel will most likely also be gen, but I will do ships eventually. Still taking suggestions for those, though I’ve picked a few. Most of them are utter crack, but if I’m gonna screw this much with canon, I figure I might as well enjoy it. 
> 
> Inquiries welcome if you care, but if you’re here for the gen and friendship or the fights or the delicious shōnen tropiness of it all, I won’t bother you with it. Ship-heavy fics will be clearly marked as such, and while I won’t be able to keep plot development out of them, I will do my best to make it so you can just read the genfics and get the important points, though you may wonder when the characters went and developed so much. 
> 
> Also that way if one particular ship really bugs you or something, you can skip that fic. I can’t promise it won’t get hinted at elsewhere, but at least it won’t be focal in, say, the Winter War-focused fic, you know?


	10. Stabilize

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Stabilize: _transitive verb_ , \ˈstā-bə-ˌlīz\
> 
> 1\. to make steadfast or firm  
> 2\. to hold steady

Uryū sat on the narrow edge of the Fourth Division hospital bed, both sides of his shihakusho dropped to his waist, exposing the half-healed cuts on his back from his fight with Kuchiki. They still stung every time he moved, and the medics had deemed his injuries severe enough to call for additional treatment. 

Despite being in Soul Society, the room they’d put him in wasn’t that different from any other hospital. The walls were stark, sanitized white, with pale green curtains on the windows and the same starchy sheets as his father’s facility had. He clamped down on the desire to scowl. 

The woman working on him, Unohana-taichō, was far above Hanatarō’s level of ability, considering how much she accomplished in a short time, and the utter lack of further pain from the healing process. “You’re just about done,” she informed him, her voice mild and pleasant. “I’ll do the reiryoku restoration next.”

Uryū lifted his head sharply. “I still have reiryoku?”

She blinked at him, and then dipped her chin. “Ah, yes. Quite a bit of it, in fact. I assume you must be referring to the loss of your ability to filter reishi, but I assure you, the two capacities are completely separate.” Her hands glowed a soft jade color as she passed them an inch above his skin, the myriad cuts on his arm closing over completely, leaving not even scars in their place. 

He’d… sort of known that, but maybe he hadn’t understood it as well as he’d believed. “The technique I used… it was supposed to seal off all my spiritual power.” 

Unohana gestured for him to offer his other arm, which he did. “Well, misunderstanding is to be expected, when one is only first learning. It doesn’t help that different people use the words in different ways, and spread the misunderstandings. What I mean to say is that you still have power within yourself, like we do. What has been impaired is your ability to draw power from outside yourself. Do you understand?”

Uryū nodded, watching idly as more sections of his broken skin melded together, smoothing out into new flesh, slightly pink compared to the rest. “I just thought that I’d lose them both, when I did it.”

For a long moment, Unohana studied his face. “I’m sorry to say I’m not an expert on Quincy techniques,” she said, “but you should not dismiss the possibility that it is the explanation that is typical and you that is strange, rather than the other way around.” 

He compressed his lips, but elected to change the topic. “I don’t want to seem rude, Unohana-taichō, but you’re the captain of the entire division. I don’t really understand why you’re healing me.”

“As opposed to what? Letting you die?” Uryū’s brows knit. It was hard to tell, but she seemed almost amused somehow.

“Actually, I just meant that you probably have more important patients to work on. Hanatarō did enough work that I wasn’t in any danger of actually dying, and besides that, I’m both a ryoka and a Quincy, so—” He pushed his glasses up his nose where they’d slipped down. 

The kidō in her hands changed color, gaining a golden tinge, and she moved her gloved hands to his temples. “Your instincts in such matters are not entirely mistaken,” she agreed, conspicuously making no apology for it. Uryū found he didn’t mind that—for someone so polite, she made her meaning very clear between her words. 

Where before she had merely been repairing his wounds, now she seemed almost to be restoring something else, something he would call energy or vitality if he didn’t already know the name. It felt oddly like a mild electric shock, or the pin-and-needle sensation after a limb had fallen asleep, only over his whole body. “But you are also, now, someone with powerful friends. You have two of the Seireitei’s most senior captains firmly insisting upon your value, and the support of three of the four great noble houses, even if one is only indirect.”

“Three of the four…?” He’d been with her until the bit about nobility, and raised a brow, though he held still under her hands.

“Mm. Yoruichi Shihōin is technically disowned, but the current head of that family is still quite fond of her, you see.” 

Yoruichi was nobility? Uryū thought of a cat, curled up on Urahara’s shoulder, and a woman with absolutely no shame coarsely informing him that he was an idiot, and wondered just what nobility was supposed to be like, here. 

“And of course, you quite impressed Shunsui-san.” 

No, nobility was _not_ what he thought it was like _at all_.

“And, naturally, the Kuchiki family as well.”

Uryū blinked. That tracked better, but had Kuchiki really…? “If that’s true, I suppose I could see why someone else might heal me,” he conceded. “But…” He considered Unohana. Was she really the sort who would just cave to that kind of external pressure? His instinct indicated otherwise. 

Her eyes crinkled faintly at the corners. “I’m flattered, Ishida-san,” she said, removing her hands from his temples in a fluid motion. “But even I respect my orders.”

He frowned, but this didn’t seem like the time to argue about it. Unohana was helping him, after all, and he had a little more grace than that. 

Handing him a clean shihakusho, she tilted her head towards a screen in the corner of the room. “You have a visitor waiting to see you, Ishida-san. She will be outside when you are prepared to receive her.”

“Thank you, Unohana-taichō.” He accepted the garment, lamenting the loss of his uniform, and stepped towards the screen. 

“No thanks are necessary,” she replied. “Farewell.”

When the door to the room closed behind her, Uryū shucked off the torn and bloody uniform and stepped into the new one, tying it more quickly than the last time he’d had to don it. “You can come in,” he told whoever was outside—there was so much reiatsu in this place it was hard to tell who was who, exactly.

The door slid open again, and Rukia stepped in, wearing a dark purple kimono with small flowers printed on it. He could tell the silk was expensive, but she demonstrated no discomfort moving in it, her stride as sure and confident as it had been in Karakura town. 

“Ishida.”

“Are you feeling well?” he asked her, dropping his hands to his sides for lack of anything else to do with them. 

“I think I should probably be asking you that,” she replied evenly, and he glanced away, his eyes lingering on the curtains for a moment before they shifted out the window. Bright sunlight streamed in from the afternoon outside; the quiet was foreign after so many days of tension and noise. 

“I’m fine.” He felt heavy and uncomfortable around all this reiatsu. He felt like a puppet with its strings cut, completely disconnected from the energy of the world around him. He felt like a stranger in his own body. He felt dull in all the ways he had once been sharp, sleepy in all the ways he’d been awake. 

He did _not_ feel Lucia. 

“Are you sure?” She didn’t know, though—it was in the little crease between her eyebrows, genuine confusion rather than knowing pity. He didn’t think he could stand pity from a shinigami, even her. 

Uryū nodded. 

Rukia sighed, taking a seat on the hospital bed, since it was the only object in the room one could reasonably sit _on_. She patted the spot next to her, and he obliged, both of them now looking out the window. Members of the Fourth ran around on the ground below, some of them carrying supplies, others what looked like messages. Knots of other people milled around, presumably those with friends or comrades among the injured.

“How are Renji and your brother?”

Rukia shifted, leaning back slightly and bracing most of her weight on her palms. “Recovering. Renji’s up and moving already. Nii-sama has to take it easy for a while still.” He made a small sound of acknowledgement, and they lapsed into silence for a few heartbeats. 

“He married my sister, you know.” Uryū blinked, tearing his eyes from the tableau in front of him and moving them to her face. “That’s why he adopted me. She… Hisana abandoned me in Inuzuri, when I was just a baby. She couldn’t support me on her own. He said… nii-sama said that she always regretted it, and looked for me almost every day.” 

Rukia’s eyes fell half-lidded. “When she died, she made him promise to find me and adopt me, so he did. But… he’d broken the rules of his family twice by then, and so he also swore to his parents that he’d never break another law. When I was sentenced to death, he…”

Uryū turned his head back towards the window. “Two promises in two different directions.”

“Yes.” A pause. “In the end, you helped him decide to come back for me.” 

“Me?”

“Mm. I’m not sure he’d ever admit it to anyone else, but… nii-sama told me that you reminded him that sometimes we have to think about what pride and duty really are.” Rukia straightened, folding her hands into her lap and staring down at them. 

“I think, somewhere deep down, I hated you. More than you hated me, even. Because you had something that I could never find in myself.” She pulled in a deep, audible breath. “You stood or fell, succeeded or failed, lived or died on your own terms. Nobody told you what was right and wrong. Not your father, not Urahara or Yoruichi. We were opposite in every way.”

Rukia’s eyes fell closed, and she shook her head faintly. “I always thought that living proudly, living well—that there was only one way to do it, and I never felt like I could. So I lived by duty instead, and told myself that it was better.” A smile tilted her mouth, just a fraction. “Even when I was going to die, I really believed it was the right thing. The thing I should do, no matter what.”

Uryū swallowed, something in his throat constricting. “And now?”

Rukia opened her eyes, lifting her shoulders. “I don’t know. It’s a question again, instead of an answer. I want to figure out what my answer is. What my pride is. I just… wanted you to know that.”

He dipped his chin, then stood from the hospital bed and made his way over to his pile of belongings. Setting several items aside, he returned with two in particular, and stood in front of her. “You left these at Urahara-san’s place. I thought you might want them.”

Sitting atop her dress was the oblong lacquer case containing the gift she’d decided on for Byakuya. He hadn’t been able to bring all of her purchases with him, but he hadn’t needed to think about which of them he’d find room for. It was obvious. 

Carefully, Rukia took the items into her hands, lowering them slowly to her lap and turning her face up to his. 

“Thank you, Ishida.”

“You’re welcome.”

* * *

Unsurprisingly, the official Soul Society senkaimon spit them out in the middle of the air, but unlike before, Uryū didn’t actually have any way to break his fall, so it was with great relief that he landed on the floating rectangle of—this was his best linen, wasn’t it? 

He’d add it to the list. Urahara was already turned around to face him, perhaps anticipating exactly what was about to happen. 

“Just what the hell is your problem?” Uryū hissed, hands clenched tightly enough that his fingernails dug into his palms. “You painted a gigantic target on her back, and you knew Aizen was looking for the Hōgyoku. She was practically defenseless, and would have been, if your gigai had been allowed to complete its purpose!” 

Urahara tipped his head down, the brim of his hat cloaking his eyes in shadow for a moment, and sighed. “I regret that I did it, but I would do it again,” he said, tone heavy.

“You couldn’t have found _any_ other way? Or, barring that, a _volunteer_?"

“The only other people who would have served the purpose need to keep their powers,” Urahara replied, though he didn’t sound defensive, only certain.

“Even if that were true, you should have told me before I left. I met more captains and former captains than I want to think about—I’m sure _someone_ could have used that information. Now Aizen is gone, and he took the orb with him. How could the outcome possibly have been any worse?”

Urahara’s eyes met his, the shopkeeper’s mouth slanting into a joyless smile. “Do you really want to know?”

“ _Yes_.”

“How many people actually died as a result of what happened?” Urahara asked the question slowly, as though he himself were uncertain of the answer. 

“Every member of the Central 46.”

“And from the shinigami ranks?”

Uryū paused. “No one actually died, but there were a dozen near misses, between all the infighting, our progress, and Aizen’s escape. The Soul Society has three fewer captains, though; two others defected with him.” He didn’t relax, but his tone softened slightly. 

Urahara folded his hands into his sleeves, tilting his head slightly back and to the left. “Aizen likes to gloat. He likes to let his enemies stew in their hopelessness. But he can also be pragmatic when the situation calls for it. If his plan had been discovered too soon, he would have killed as many of them as necessary to make his escape.”

Uryū’s frown deepened. “You’re saying that even if all the captains and vice-captains had known in advance, they wouldn’t have been able to do anything?” That was hard to believe, even against such a powerful foe. 

The breeze of their passage plastered Urahara’s pale hair against his cheek. “How would we have alerted them in advance? I’m an exile, Yoruichi has no status anymore, and you’re a Quincy. Who would have believed us?” He shook his head. “No, Aizen would simply have adjusted his plan, or bided his time long enough that suspicion naturally slipped away from him again. There were more ways than one to accomplish what he wished. I knew what he’d want to do, by default, and so I made sure that that was what he _would_ do.” 

“Some of them seemed to be suspicious of him already.”

“Probably Kyōraku-san, right?” Uryū nodded. “Those suspicions are longstanding, Ishida-kun. He might have believed us, if we’d told him, and he’s a powerful ally to have, but that’s the same reason that him moving any earlier than he did, with any more information than he had, would have changed Aizen’s plans. I did what I did because once Rukia got here, I knew exactly what would happen, and it’s better to run the scenario you can predict than the one you can’t.”

Uryū’s jaw tightened, but then he forced it to relax again. “It wasn’t right, what you did. Using her like that without her consent. Even if we were the only ones you’d told… you should have told us.”

Urahara blinked, then ducked his head. “I should have,” he conceded. “You especially, Ishida-kun. I have to say, even I didn’t predict just how far you’d take this.” If that wasn’t genuine regret, Urahara was a better actor than Uryū could ever see past. 

“Just… apologize next time you see her. Whether she forgives you or not is no business of mine.”

“Yeah… will do.”

* * *

_Two Years Later_

Uryū sighed, turning the gintō over and over between his fingers, passing it absently from one knuckle to the next. It was completely smooth, save for the little sigil carved into the side, which rasped over his skin. 

Flipping it into his palm, he focused the thread of reiryoku into the vessel, quickly filling it with liquid energy, warming the outside and the skin of his fingers in turn. Once it was full, he set it to the size with the dozen others he had, though his fingers lingered. The process was irritating in its inelegance, but for two years, these had been all he really had. That, and whatever raw reiryoku he could generate. 

He missed the fine-grained control he’d had over reishi, but since Urahara knew of no way to return his abilities, he’d simply had to adapt. Tapping the gintō on the surface of the desk in a staccato pattern, he stared at the silver until his vision blurred, entering his inner world easily. 

Nothing about it had changed, of course. It was still the same featureless white plain it had always been, and Lucia was still there, asleep and unresponsive to anything he tried. She’d curled herself into a ball, her proud posture and evident maturity receding into something childlike in slumber. He’d tried physically prodding her, speaking to her, even trying to force reiryoku to pass between them, but nothing had any effect. 

So most days, he just sat with her, talking about anything that came to mind. 

“It’s eight years today,” he said, tone mostly without inflection. “That’s how long Urahara thinks is left until the Hōgyoku awakens from dormancy.” Apparently, shutting the thing away in Rukia’s soul had done that to it. By Soul Society’s reckoning, he supposed it wasn’t a great deal of time, but it was something. An opportunity to prepare, anyway. 

Of course, to him, it was a significant span indeed. He’d be twenty-five by the time it was up; and at this rate probably not much more than a blip on the Soul Society’s radar. That Quincy, who’d once been a ryoka. Or rather… that ryoka, who’d once been a Quincy. 

All he had left was this reservoir of reiryoku that was nearly useless to him, except for filling gintō. The technology was so antiquated it was almost laughable. If he hadn’t used _Letzt Stil_ , he wondered how much he’d have changed in the time between. If he’d have gained power enough to accomplish what he wanted. 

If he’d have figured out what it was that he wanted. 

“You’d have helped with that, I expect,” he said to the sleeping woman beside him. Her shoulders rose and fell steadily, her breath stirring a strand of hair that had fallen in front of her face. That was reassuring, in a way—better than the first few weeks after everything, when he hadn’t been able to find her at all. 

Uryū reached over and carefully moved the hair back behind her ear. “I got my university exam results back,” he told her, leaning on both his hands. “It seems I’ll have my choice. Results are all anyone at school talks about.” He got a lot of teachers asking him if he’d take over his father’s hospital someday. 

He should probably speak with Ryūken at some point. Perhaps before the decade was up, just in case Aizen succeeded. There was no defeating someone on that level with gintō, else he’d have been much more concerned, but… knowing that the whole thing was going to be out of his hands was a double-edged sword. Best case, he’d be able to use his artifacts and spells to do… something. Keep Hollows out of Karakura, like he did now. 

At least it seemed like something sensei would have done, in the same situation.

“I’ll be back tomorrow, Lucia.”

* * *

_Thud_.

Uryū’s crossed forearms strained under the impact of Yoruichi’s kick, but with a heave, he shoved her back, unbalancing her for a half-second. The opening closed as fast as it had appeared, and he planted himself against the ground instead, catching her punch in his open palm, braced from behind by the other one. 

“Come on, Ishida, you can go faster than that. I should have been on the floor with an opening that obvious!” He ducked under her second kick, turning the elbow that followed aside with his palm, the dull impact noises echoing through the basement training room, amplified by the lack of other activity. 

“No,” he replied flatly, “I can’t.” He sidestepped just in time to miss her knee, but her armbar caught him right in the chest, the force behind it picking him up off the ground and sending him to the dirt a dozen feet away from her. 

It took him a few seconds to be able to breathe, and when he did, it hissed into his lungs from between his gritted teeth, the point of impact still stinging sharply. Ah. He’d upset her somehow. 

Yoruichi loomed over him, arms crossed, mouth downturned. “You’re being intentionally dense. Just because you can’t use _hirenkyaku_ doesn’t mean you can’t learn _shunpō_ , and I happen to be the best teacher you could dream of having if you wanted to learn that.” She raised an eyebrow, but made no move to help him up.

Which was fine, because he wasn’t even trying to _get_ up. He scowled at her, opening his mouth to reply. 

“If you say one word about shinigami or Quincy, I’ll break your arm.”

He closed his jaw with a click.

She sighed, rolling her eyes before reaching down and hauling him to his feet by the front of his shirt. Almost absently, she dusted off his shoulders. “Look, Ishida, this isn’t about that anymore. It can’t be, don’t you see?”

He drew his brows together. “You say that like I’m still supposed to make a difference with this Aizen business.”

Yoruichi shifted slightly, remaining silent and staring directly at him.

“I am, aren’t I?” Uryū passed a hand down the lower half of his face. 

“You know, a little advance warning would have been nice. I might have done a bit more in these last couple of years.”

She cracked a smile, shaking her head. “You needed a break. Kisuke figured it’d be three years before you started feeling so useless you couldn’t stand it anymore and got desperate enough to just ask us for help.”

“And you?”

The smile grew into a grin. “It took you six months to hate how useless you were, but you weren’t ever going to _ask_ for help.” The look on his face drew an amused huff from Yoruichi, and she reached forward to muss his hair, heedless of his half-voiced objection. 

Her expression sobered, though, and when he’d finished repairing the damage, he found her regarding him seriously. “There are going to be parts of this you don’t like, Ishida. Things we’re going to ask you to do that offend your pride. But I think you understand by now that we do what we do because it’s the best we _can_ do, with everything against us.”

Uryū pursed his lips, considering his words carefully. “There are some things I won’t do,” he told her quietly, meeting her eyes steadily. “I won’t obey you unconditionally. I’ll want explanations, reasons. And even if you have them… I still have principles I won’t break. But… I’m willing to hear you out, and that won’t change.” 

“Good to know.” The new voice belonged to Urahara, and Uryū’s eyes snapped to where the shopkeeper leaned casually on his cane. Straightening his posture, Urahara set Benihime over the line of his shoulders, tipping his head sideways. 

“So, Ishida-kun… how do you feel about dying?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It’s my headcanon/true in this AU that the Kyōraku are one of the four great noble houses, along with the Shihōin, the Kuchiki, and some random unnamed house. In case Uryū’s conversation with Unohana didn’t make that obvious. 
> 
> Also, in this fic there’s no way to accelerate the Hōgyoku out of dormancy immediately, so the Soul Society is running on an estimate of 10 years from the time Aizen left to the time his army goes online. He’s a smart guy though, so he might be able to get it to wake up a little sooner, but definitely not “eight manga chapters later” sooner. So we have an antebellum period here that I fully intend to exploit.
> 
> * * *
> 
> Whew. Well, that’s it. The kickoff fic for the series is done. I’m kinda proud of myself for being able to basically do a NaNoWriMo project in roughly ten days, because that was the goal I set. Much more importantly, though, I hope it was enjoyable, and that I’ve convinced at least a few people to strap in for the much longer rollercoaster ride that is to be the rest of the series. 
> 
> A massive internet bear hug to all consenting reviewers. Numerically, your forces are not great, but like the captains of the Gotei 13, you’d make the rest of an army look pretty pointless anyway, because of how awesome you are.
> 
> The next story is another genfic called _The Three-Body Problem_ , and the POV characters in that one are Ishida, Yuzu, and Karin, who will be sharing a very formative experience. Others will, of course, be making appearances. Give me like… a week or so to storyboard and outline that one, and then I’ll start posting chapters again. It may take me less time, so if you want to bookmark or follow me or whatever, you’re obviously welcome to. Or not. You do you.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Footnotes:](https://archiveofourown.org/works/7566568) by [BiblioMatsuri](https://archiveofourown.org/users/BiblioMatsuri/pseuds/BiblioMatsuri)
  * [for the fallen ones, locked away](https://archiveofourown.org/works/7869178) by [BiblioMatsuri](https://archiveofourown.org/users/BiblioMatsuri/pseuds/BiblioMatsuri)
  * [unbecoming: a story of change](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13372152) by [komiv](https://archiveofourown.org/users/komiv/pseuds/komiv)




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